


Navigational Errors

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Navigation-verse [1]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-15
Updated: 2004-09-11
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:57:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 49,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
Jack Shaftoe was seldom given to introspection, being fonder of merriment and mayhem than of his own thoughts, but recent circumstances had bestowed upon him an abundance of time in which to think.

He had spent six days alone down here in the brig of the _Henrietta Marie_. Or perhaps it had been a week. Or more. No light, except the weak glimmer of the bosun's lantern once a day, reached this far into the bowels of the ship. None of his mates had come to pass the time of day, either, but Jack couldn't really blame them. The brig, ripe with the stench of piss and rotting wood -- best not think about that rottenness, since it was all that separated him from the Atlantic Ocean -- wasn't the most salubrious of prisons, though it was far from being the worst that he'd known.

There were rats in the bilges, and Jack had amused himself by catching one or two, his first day in his new quarters: but rat-flesh, even kebobbed over a camp-fire, was unpalatable, and he had neither tinder nor fuel to kindle a blaze. Nor, let it be said, did he harbour any wish to be dragged out of the brig and shot, which would almost certainly be the fate of any man who lit a fire in the hold of a wooden ship.

So Jack kept his peace (which, had he done so six or seven days ago, would have saved him from the brig altogether) and tried to savour the increasingly brittle bread, and curiously pungent water, that the bosun brought him from time to time. Between these visits, he curled up on the damp wood and tried to sleep. His dreams were a sight more entertaining than anything he could conjure while awake.

When he was roused from an intricately-detailed dream in which he had somehow acquired a blue-eyed, silk-swathed Turkish houri and was about to experience rather more than a taste of the Orient, Jack's natural impulse was to swear viciously at whoever was making such a racket. As he came more awake, however, he realised that the din, enough to disturb the most determined sleeper, came from far above him. There was some sort of commotion up on deck -- men shouting and running, the creaking of wood under pressure, an apocalyptic thunder that sounded as though a cavalry detachment had arrived on board, but probably had something to do with ten heavy guns being moved at once -- and Jack cocked an ear, trying to make out what was occurring.

Abruptly, Jack was overwhelmed by sensations, crowding so fast upon one another, after the peace and quiet of the last week or so, that he was literally overwhelmed. He became aware, in turn, of temperature, humidity, salinity, sound, light, colour and perforation: which is to say that he found himself soaked with cold salty water; that the shouting, running, et cetera was more clearly audible and had been joined by the definite sloshing of sea water, sweeping around a confined space; that there was a large and ragged hole in place of much of the curve of hull, and beyond it a confused mixture of moving green water, tangled ropes and the dark sails and black timbers of another ship; and that much of the rotting oak that had previously been part of the _Henrietta Marie_ had made its acquaintance, at some considerable velocity, with various parts of Jack's anatomy.

To punctuate the experience, a spent cannonball came to rest against his right knee, transforming its forward momentum into a pain that was at once clearer and heavier than the hedgehog-prickle of splinters, and a vile oath that was pulled forth from Jack himself.

"Oi! Shaftoe!"

That was the bosun, a broad-shouldered man who had acquired a red stripe down one side of his face. Jack's knee held his weight: he struggled to his feet. "What?"

"Pirates," said the bosun grimly. "All hands on deck, if you're ready to take up arms against 'em."

"Delighted," said Jack, wondering what would be left in the arms chest by the time he got to it. He followed the bosun back up the stairs. The crew had rearranged the deck since he'd been dragged below: in place of the neatly-stowed cordage, sailcloth, poultry-cages and fire buckets there was a cat's-cradle of rope decorated with splintered wood and panicked hens. The mainsail had torn free, making an awning that cast half the deck into shade. No more than ten feet from the starboard side of the _Henrietta Marie_ was a behemoth of a ship, all black wood and black canvas, which was apparently crewed by shrieking, howling lunaticks. Some of them, indeed, were already making their way down to the deck of the _Henrietta Marie_ via gang-planks, boarding-nets and gravity. They were a disreputable-looking band, half of them barefoot and many of them wearing garments that Jack would have sold for rags. It was difficult, at a glance, to tell them apart from his mates, who had seized whatever weaponry came to hand and were laying into the pirates with glee. It had been a while since Port Royal, and life on board the _Henrietta Marie_ had offered few opportunities for mayhem, until now.

Jack grabbed a pike -- really, a stick with a blunt lump of iron on one end -- but hung back from the melée. There was no point in committing himself to the losing side, and he was already heartily sick of the _Henrietta Marie_ and her dull crew. Now he was armed, he had the chance to do something about it.

The bosun, he was pleased to see, had gone down under a knot of men. Jack could see Tom Flinch and Dick Smith getting in a kick or two, for the bosun had not made himself popular with their little band. There was no sign of the captain, which Jack took to mean that he was already dead. The _Henrietta Marie_ was listing towards the pirate ship, decreasing the angle of ascent for the pirates who were busily transferring bales of sugar to the black ship. Those pirates could easily be spared from the brawl on deck -- it had decreased in ferocity quite markedly while Jack was watching.

He'd thought better of his mates, but perhaps the tedium of life on board had sapped their spirits. Jack Shaftoe had a reputation to think of -- and a desire to ensure that there was at least _one_ survivor who might make it back to London to tell his story to whoever would listen.

"I surrender!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, flinging down the useless pike dramatically. "Who's for going on account, lads?"

"Thought you'd never come to it," said someone from behind him.

Jack spread his hands and shuffled around, trying to smile ingratiatingly. His cannonballed knee threatened to fold under him, and he was dizzy with thirst.

"Didn't see you earlier, mate," remarked the pirate, looking him up and down. "Having a nap, were we?"

Jack flicked a series of brief glances at his interlocutor. Thin, tanned, a head shorter than Jack; decked out in a battered three-cornered hat, clothes that had been cut for someone of stockier build, and a good pair of boots; there were beads tied into his black hair, and he'd drawn black lines around his eyes, perhaps to make himself look fiercer. It hadn't worked.

"I'd been confined to the brig," said Jack, hiding his annoyance at the implication of cowardice, and managing a creditably simple-minded smile.

"Aye?" said the pirate, head tilted. "For what offence?"

"A mere trifle," said Jack. "The bosun found my humour not to his taste."

"You won't be missing him, then," said the pirate, glancing across to where a couple of the crew, at pistol-point, were heaving a corpse over the bow. "Been to sea before, lad?"

_That_ was rich, coming from someone who Jack reckoned to be not more than a handful of years his senior. On the other hand, this fellow had a cutlass in his hand (though there was no blood on the blade, yet) and -- more importantly -- he represented a way off the terminally dull, if not terminally damaged, _Henrietta Marie_.

Jack Shaftoe swallowed his pride, and a number of witty remarks that would doubtless have sent him after the bosun in short order.

"I became acquainted with nautical matters at an early age," he explained. "As a boy --"

"And yet you're sailing back t' Europe," said the pirate. "Anyone might think you'd had a taste of the Caribbee and found it not to your liking."

"Lovely place," said Jack promptly, "delightful climate. Rich with opportunities. I was merely paying a visit home to tell my dear old ma that I'd be decamping to warmer climes."

"We've ink and paper aboard; you can write her a letter."

"She can't read," said Jack, forbearing to point out his own shortcomings in that area.

"Then, by all means, stay aboard the -- what's this ship? -- the _Henrietta Marie_. Fair weather, for the season; you've an even chance of making it back to Port Royal."

The pirate turned away, and Jack saw the chances of an interesting life -- indeed, any life at all -- vanishing before his eyes. For once common sense (as preached so often by his brother Bob) and the impulse toward a merry, entertaining and adventuresome life -- likely brief, but then Jack had no notion of growing old and toothless -- were in accord. Both Bob and the Imp of the Perverse -- Bob's term for Jack's familiar spirit, which regularly whispered news of intriguing (or, as Bob'd had it, 'reckless') opportunities into his ear -- would have counselled him to get himself onto the pirate ship.

And sometimes Jack Shaftoe was capable of making decisions of his own.

"Take me with you," he said quickly. "I can fight -- haul on a rope -- I've a mind to --"

The _Henrietta Marie_ lurched as her emptied holds filled with ocean; Jack's injured knee gave way, and he fell.

Halfway to the deck, he was arrested by a surprisingly strong grip.

"Easy, mate," said the pirate, steadying him. "That there's the _Black Pearl_. Heard of her?"

"Every man's heard of the _Black Pearl_!" lied Jack, gawping like an imbecile. Come to think of it, there'd been a bloke in the tavern back in Port Royal one night, going on about a pirate band who'd stolen some fabulous treasure from a Spanish nobleman. Jack was almost certain that their ship'd been called the _Black Pearl_ , or the _Black Rose_ , or something like that. And fabulous treasure was always of interest to Jack Shaftoe, carrying as it did the implication of wealth unearn'd.

"The most fearsome ship on the Spanish Main," said the pirate, with a slow smile that showed his gold-capped teeth. Jack had seen that expression before, on the pock-marked (and much less fetching) faces of buccaneers in Port Royal as they made more or less outrageous suggestions: but this time he was not the object of it. The pirate's fond gaze was directed wholly at his ship, and his voice had become a possessive growl. "My _Pearl_."


	2. Chapter 2

  
  
"All mine," thought Jack Sparrow, and indeed he was master of all he surveyed: from the maintop, his beloved _Black Pearl_ was a long, dark sliver of wood below him, animated by the comings and goings of her foreshortened crew. The ocean spread calm and blue to the edges of the world, where the horizon made a circular wall. No other ship disturbed this little world; no sails -- black like those stretched above and below him, or, more commonly and undistinguishedly, off-white -- marred the blueness of it all. Off to the east, a school of silvery fish sparkled and glinted like treasure between the waves. The _Pearl_ 's wake broadened to the north-east. Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, they'd raise the outermost of the Leeward Isles: then, once they were in Caribbean waters once more -- though before they dropped anchor in, let's see, one of Guiana's charming little coastal towns -- Jack would gather the crew and let them decide what they wanted. Within reason, of course; within the confines of the broader tale he was weaving.

He cocked an eye at the horizon again. There were a few clouds gathered to the north, but nothing worth fleeing. A storm might drive merchant ships into the _Pearl_ 's path; legitimate prey, or even a market for their latest plunder. Then again, he'd acquired both map and codex at last, and soon enough they'd all be rich enough to make chase purely for the sport of it.

Near seventy of them now, with the new recruits from the sugar ship. The crew of the _Henrietta Marie_ had elected to stay with their foundering vessel, despite the demise of captain and bosun, rather than turn pirate and sail with Captain Jack Sparrow. Barbossa, the _Pearl_ 's First Mate, had mocked them for cowards, but Jack didn't want any man to come unwilling to the life they led. That way lay madness and mutiny, and watching your back in every fight. No, let the cautious and the conservative nurse their plundered ship back to the islands; Jack Sparrow would make sure that their cargo -- mainly sugar, but there'd been a couple of precious sacks of indigo -- found a good market, perhaps in the Dutch and Portuguese ports of Venezuela and Brazil.

The other plunder from the _Henrietta Marie_ was roaming free on deck, walking and talking and making its various friendships and alliances with the pirate crew of the _Black Pearl_.

There were four of them, all London born and bred, and as chancy a bunch of ne'er-do-wells as Jack Sparrow had ever encountered. They'd fit in nicely. Barbossa (who managed to look imposing more easily) had read them the Articles, and Jack had given them a week to make up their minds. Any man who didn't care to sign his name (or make his mark) in the book might leave the ship when next she dropped anchor, along with the sugar and the indigo, and a few luxury items (not to Jack's taste) that were left over from the Don's mansion.

Tom Flinch (who Jack could see emptying his stomach, yet again, from the gallery beside the bowsprit) would be off, likely enough. He'd waxed eloquent last night on how he'd been permanently dissuaded from piracy, and every other maritime occupation, by his experiences here and aboard the _Henrietta Marie_. A miracle that he'd ever left Wapping Stairs, given the seasickness. Jack wondered if it was possible to die of it; must be the rum keeping him alive, for nothing else stayed down long enough to nourish him. A pity to lose him, really; he was a bright lad, and easy on the eye.

His mate Jemmy Taylor seemed unlikely to turn pirate, either, but that was no great loss. A surly piece of work, he was, with a face that somehow always seemed to be scowling, even when Jemmy was laughing -- which was usually at one of his own lack-wit jokes. Somebody, probably Bill, had got Taylor chipping shot, but he'd found a flask of rum with which to reward himself, and almost every flake of rust that he managed to chisel free warranted a reward. Jack, from his vantage point in the maintop, thought it likely that Mister Taylor would have one less thumb by the end of the day, if he carried on like that.

Tom Cox had taken to life on board as though born to it. He was stripped to the waist, showing the grain of several recent floggings against a deep tan. The King's Navy, perhaps? He'd been afloat before, at any rate; no one flemished a line in a neat and perfect coil, as he was doing now, without years of practice. Actually, no one on board the _Black Pearl_ _ever_ flemished a line like that. About time the _Pearl_ had another sailor worthy of the name; half of the company, at least, were no more than hired muscle, who might pull on a rope (if shown which one) in times of need but who otherwise, in nautical matters, were less use than the ship's cat. And Cox was a decent bloke, the sort who laughed when he lost the shirt off his back to Plaice's loaded dice -- and won it back, still laughing, on the predicted toss of a coin. He'd do.

Jack settled himself more securely against the mainmast, and shifted the glass to his other eye. Still nothing on the horizon; but, after all, the ants on deck were ever so much more interesting. And where was Mr Shaftoe, the Moses who had led his little band out of a life of dismal propriety and onto the _Black Pearl_? Jack had no illusions about the dynamics of that group. Good mates they might be, with a catalogue of mischief and mayhem behind them in Port Royal -- and, no doubt, ahead of them, wherever they might end up next -- but it was Jack Shaftoe that they followed, Jack's jokes (or rather witticisms, for he seldom recounted stories the way that Jemmy Taylor did) that had them bellowing with laughter, Jack to whom they looked for guidance.

It had been Jack Shaftoe who'd yelled, "Who's with me?" last Wednesday (Sparrow was particular about the days of the week) on the tilting deck of the _Henrietta Marie_. Jack remembered it well. Two of the lads -- shabby of dress and scarred with pox -- had declined to cross the gangplank.

"I ain't hanging for you, Shaftoe!" one of them had bellowed across the widening gap.

"And I'm not drowning for you, Dick Porter, you yellow-bellied cur!" Shaftoe had shouted back, clapping onto a stay and gesturing crudely as the gangplank was hauled back onto the _Pearl_ 's deck. "Give your sweetheart my regards when he's rogering you!"

Which comment, in itself, was a shame, for it bespoke an attitude which some might take amiss. Not so Jack Sparrow; each to his own, after all, and Shaftoe wasn't to Jack's taste. Oh, handsome enough -- blue eyes, long sandy hair, and a straight nose that'd not been improved by having been broken once or twice -- but he was nowhere near as fetching as his mate Tom Flinch, or as smoothly powerful as Barbossa, or as lithe and elegant as Jack Sparrow himself (on a good day). Probably a good thing, really; the crew of the _Pearl_ were a civil lot, on the whole, but it'd been a long passage from Bermuda, and some of the men were getting lonely.

Jack made a point of knowing who was going with whom on board his ship, and none of the London gang seemed interested in doing anything much, of a night-time, except slinging their hammocks together, below decks, and playing dice, or building castles in the air, or reminiscing (lewdly and imaginatively, and quite unrealistically) about girls they'd known back in England. None of them had shown any inclination to further their acquaintance with the _Pearl_ 's crew, though Jack had caught Barbossa eyeing Tom Flinch appreciatively one evening. He, Jack, had shot Barbossa a deadly look, but the First Mate had only grinned, as though it were a game between the two of them.

And of course it _was_ a game, thought Jack Sparrow (shifting uncomfortably on the unforgiving wooden planks of the maintop) because he'd have been a fool to take Barbossa's flattery without a pinch of salt, and he wasn't -- refused to be -- a fool. There'd been the occasional hot look, of course, even before Bermuda; and in Bermuda, matters had reached some sort of resolution.

Jack thought about that resolution -- that _repeated_ resolution -- and felt himself flushing. He raised the glass and scanned the horizon once more. Bill had not approved, and had said so; and Jack Sparrow had _let_ him say so, because Bill Turner was a better friend, in many ways, than Barbossa.

Didn't mean he was right.

"Should've made Bill Turner First Mate," Barbossa had said lightly, one night in Bermuda. "Since you reckon he's so smart."

"Nah, you're First," Jack had said. "You've captained your own vessel; you've been afloat longer than Bill." Which was true, and had been sufficient to change the subject. Jack had found himself unwilling to discuss the other reasons for making Barbossa First Mate, instead of steady Bill Turner who sent home money to his wife and child whenever the _Pearl_ was in port, who'd stitched up Jack's arm after that bar-room fracas, who didn't ... Bad enough even to admit those reasons to himself. Barbossa was a pirate to the bone, more ruthless than Bill -- or, for that matter, Jack. He knew every port in the Caribbean, and every bordello and tavern worth visiting in each. He knew how the sea took men, and turned them, and made them act as they'd never act on land. Not to mention that hot gaze, which Jack had met more and more frequently since they'd plundered the Spanish Don's library. Not to mention the green eyes, and the red hair, and the sheer strength of his hands.

Now (Jack's glass had somehow pointed itself, as if directed by some Imp, back down towards the deck) Barbossa was focussing his attentions on Tom Cox and Jemmy Taylor. Taylor was a hard case, and Jack didn't care about him one way or the other, but Cox would be a valuable addition to the company, if Barbossa could persuade him to stay. It'd be foolish of Jack, after all, to resent his First Mate's efforts on behalf of the _Black Pearl_.

And yet Barbossa -- who, with his mane of reddish hair tied back, and a jewel sparkling in his ear, and that broad mouth smiling easily as he pulled something shiny from inside his shirt and showed it to the two of them, looked the very epitome of piracy -- had taken care to corner the lads in the lee of the quarterdeck, where no one could eavesdrop on their conversation. Jack wondered why he'd gone to such pains not to be observed; it was clear that he had no notion of his captain's eye on him.

And, Jack suddenly noticed, it wasn't only himself who was observing Barbossa and his little audience. Jack Shaftoe was lounging down there in the waist, no more than a couple of steps away from the First Mate but hidden from view by the water butt he leaned against. He was pretending to do something with a couple of ends of rope, but he hadn't yet mastered the sailor's art of busy idling, and his hands stilled as he listened. He was frowning; perhaps at what he'd heard, perhaps only at the unwillingness of the rope to splice itself neatly.

"What call's he to look so interested?" murmured Jack Sparrow aloud to the mast, lowering the glass. "It's not as though..."

Not as though Shaftoe knows anything about the _Pearl_ 's business, he'd been about to say (to the _Pearl_ herself, really, since no one else was listening). But that was it, wasn't it? A fresh eye might perceive everything anew, as through a glass that did not magnify, but rather clarified, what it showed.

Now Jack could see no more than ants on the far-below deck. The trio of ants by the water butt moved together -- as though to shake hands, or clap one another on the back -- and then apart. From this height, Jack knew, the glint and glitter might've been no more than the swing of Barbossa's earring.

The solitary, light-haired ant slunk away stern-wards.

Another ant, wearing a shirt that looked as though it had been made from scraps of older, reddish-hued garments (Jack couldn't actually see this from the maintop, but he had been observing Bill's shirts for some months now) made its way up from the hold. Jack cast a final look at the horizon -- he saw no ships -- and, pocketing the glass, slid down the backstay just in time to intercept Bill.

"Mr Turner," he said. "Keep an eye on our First Mate, would you? Quietly, mind."

Bill grinned. "Seen sense, then?"

"I've seen something," said Jack darkly.

Barbossa, even if he'd noticed his captain descending -- like a god in a play -- from above, would've seen no more than Mr Turner nodding (obsequiously, no doubt) at some casual remark of Jack Sparrow's.

"Oh," added Jack with a sweeping gesture, loud enough for all to hear, "and send Mr Shaftoe down to my cabin, when he's finished what he's doing."

In the semi-privacy of his cabin -- not the _Pearl_ ’s great stern-cabin, but her captain’s own sleeping-space, cramped and gloomy and more nearly his own -- Captain Jack Sparrow fortified himself with rum, and settled down to wait.


	3. Navigational Errors, ch 3

  
  
"Captain wants to see you, Shaftoe," said the bloke in the nasty red shirt -- Bill, wasn't it? -- coming up to stand next to Jack at the bow. "In 'is cabin." He jerked a thumb aft.

Jack looked askance at him, trying to determine the offence for which he was being summoned. None of them had done anything amiss yet, unless you counted being better (safer, really, to say 'luckier') at games of chance than most of the pirates; and Jack himself had made some effort to fit in with the crew, since he was likely to be cooped up with these men for some time. Assuming, that was, that the captain, or his overbearing First Mate Barbossa, hadn't taken a dislike to him, or to any (or all) of his fellow refugees from the _Henrietta Marie_.

He wondered if the sugar ship had foundered yet. The image of Dick Porter clinging to a spar presented itself, irresistibly, to Jack's inner eye, and brought a smile to his face.  
  
"Now, mate!" amplified Bill; but he seemed cheerful enough, and Jack relaxed a little. He nodded to Bill, and made his way back to the captain's cabin. Now he might get to see behind the scenes, and discover the truth behind all the tales the crew were so ready to recount. At the very least he might get some good rum.

If a month in Port Royal, that notorious stronghold of piracy and vice, had taught Jack Shaftoe nothing else, it'd given him a good eye for varying degrees of sexual diversity. The captain of the _Black Pearl_ \-- he might call himself Jack Sparrow, but that was an anonym if ever Jack'd heard one -- was entirely outside his experience. Sparrow favoured a neat moustache, like a Spanish Don's; his paltry beard was knotted into twin braids, and he wore his hair long and wild, with an entire peddler’s stock of gewgaws and trinkets tied into it. His eyes were whorishly painted, his lips as full as a petulant girl's, and when he smiled -- which was often -- there was the nigh-irresistible glitter of gold.

Whatever he was, though, Jack wasn't interested in it. He'd spent a bad month convincing randy buccaneers that his booty wasn't worth plundering. Ending up in a pirate's bed (or more likely on his knees on the splintery black deck, waiting for some drunken corsair to locate his warty, scabrous member) would have been monstrously unfair.

Not that the _Black Pearl_ was quite the hotbed of sodomy and perversion that he'd expected of a notorious pirate ship. True, there were no women on board (at least as far as Jack could determine), and it was clear that some of the crew had formed unusually close and binding friendships with one another. But this did not surprise, or even especially discomfit, Jack Shaftoe: there'd been a few of that sort in the Regiment. Whenever one of them had gazed with more than ordinary appreciation at the fresh-faced blond charms of Jack or Bob, though, a couple of the officers had taken them off and explained (in a way that left no permanent scars) that the boys were Regimental Mascots and, as such, strictly off-limits. Jack's childhood, therefore, had been free of any first-hand demonstration of the sodomitical arts. Later, in his theatre-going days, he had spent a fair bit of time sneaking in and out through the actors' dressing-rooms, a route that was often as lucrative as it was entertaining. He'd received several offers that led him to think favourably of his own net worth in this particular market, while never actually being quite so down on his luck as to enter into such transactions.

For a band of infamous cut-throats, weeks from the nearest brothel, the _Pearl_ 's crew behaved with remarkable restraint. Jack would occasionally turn and catch one of them in the act, as he saw it, of eyeing Jack (more precisely, Jack's arse) lasciviously: but a scowl was always enough to defuse these situations. No one cornered him below-decks, or pressed up against him with a pretended loss of balance when a particularly heavy swell lifted and rocked the _Pearl_. And there was little opportunity for anyone to get Jack Shaftoe alone without his cooperation. The captain and his officers (who seemed, like chorus members in a Greek tragedy, to have an almost _democratic_ power over their leader) slept in various cabins near the back -- the stern -- of the ship; but Jack and his mates slung their hammocks with the rest of the crew, in the dark pungent expanse of the gundeck. That suited Jack very well; he had no particular use for privacy.

Jack had done his share of skulking around the deck, talking to the crew and trying to work out what manner of pirates these were. He had been disappointed, in Port Royal, to find that the streets were not paved with anything at all, let alone gold; and though pirates were reputed to be wealthy, most of the common sailors on the _Pearl_ went barefoot and wore rags, or (in Bill's case) amalgamations of older rags.

"Plenty of gold where we're going, mate," said one of them: "Captain's got a map, 'e 'as", claimed another. At first Jack had to suppress his laughter at this simple-minded faith. Continued observation of Sparrow -- _Captain_ Sparrow, a title that Jack could not quite bring himself to confer upon someone so manifestly up to no good -- caused him to wonder if there were more to this than just an elaborate sting.

And then there was the thing with Barbossa, who seemed keen to overhaul the precarious democracy of the ship, and do some proper pirating, of the kind that made men wealthy enough to laze in the sun for the rest of their lives. This made Jack Shaftoe uneasy, for it sounded a little too good to be true, and he didn't care to find himself taking the path of caution and good sense. Yet there was something about Barbossa that he cared for even less; something behind his eyes, something in his manner, which made Jack think he'd be a nightmare of a captain.

Tom Flinch'd been invited for a drink with the captain a couple of days back. Jack had hung around on deck, not quite daring to eavesdrop, waiting for Tom to emerge and tell all, until Barbossa had collared him and found some rope that needed splicing. Barbossa had stood there watching him until Jack's skin felt raw with observation, dropping the occasional comment -- not quite off-hand enough to be genuinely casual -- about how well the _Pearl_ would do with a captain who understood what was needed. When Tom _had_ reappeared, swaying and clumsy-footed but otherwise intact, he'd been too drunk to say very much at all, except that Sparrow had matched him drink for drink, and that it had been really, really good rum. Nothing about what was needed; nothing about treasure; nothing about daring raids; in short, nothing at all specific.

"Wanted to know what me plans were," he'd said next morning, having slept off what he reported as a truly heroic quantity of rum. "That's all. What I _could_ do, and what I _would_ do."

"No funny business?" Jemmy (more than usually wary after a couple of unpleasant experiences in Port Royal) had asked.

"Nothin' at all," Tom had said.

"No hidden treasure?" Jack, ever the pragmatist, had asked. "No raids on ships or towns?"

"Nothin' like that," Tom had said; and perhaps he'd have said more, but then the rum had worn off sufficiently for the sea-sickness to return, and Tom had spent the rest of the morning head-down at the scuppers.

So Jack Shaftoe, standing once more outside the captain's cabin, felt justified in anticipating his own share, or sweetener, of decent rum, in exchange for some prevarication on his part -- no point in abandoning the _Black Pearl_ before he was ready, after all -- and the opportunity to ask a few questions of his own. Maybe there was more, too; he'd yet to see any treasure at all, but what better place to store it than the captain's own quarters?

When Sparrow called for him to enter, he looked around curiously. This was the captain's sleeping-cabin -- why call him here, rather than to the stern-cabin? -- and it was small and cramped, with a massive iron gun right in the middle of the floor, and crates piled against the bulkhead. Maybe there was treasure in the crates; a surreptitious nudge of Jack's booted foot did not move the nearest one a single inch. There was a mask on the wall, all metal and glass: someone had draped a length of red cloth -- possibly a spare bandana -- over the place where its eyes should have been.

Sparrow was sitting on the sloping, blanket-covered bunk, his back to the porthole, and Jack Shaftoe couldn't make out his expression at all. There was already a leather jack of rum in his hand, and he poured another for Jack without asking whether he wanted it. It was very good rum.

"So, Mr Shaftoe," he said, in that accent that Jack couldn't quite place, "heard any good stories lately? Sit down if you want: that chest should be up to your weight."

Jack sat down, muttering his thanks for the drink, and tried to think faster than he was about to speak. Sparrow's words implied one of two -- three -- several cases. Either Barbossa's generous, and unpleasantly specific, offer to Jemmy Taylor and Tom Cox -- on which Jack had merely eavesdropped, not at all willing to be drawn so far into another man's schemes -- had been a trap; or he'd been observed listening to Barbossa's unidle speculations the other evening; or someone had been telling tales about Jack Shaftoe, making him out to have some involvement in this scheme; or Sparrow was simply fishing, sounding him out for any scraps of information.

Or, of course, Shaftoe was imputing more cleverness to the pirate than was fair or accurate, and Sparrow simply wanted to swap lewd anecdotes. Jack Shaftoe wondered which ones he'd most enjoy.

"Come on, man," said Sparrow cheerfully, tilting back his cup. His eyes glittered in the dull, greenish light that refracted through the porthole. "Whatever you will."

"Er," said Jack thoughtfully. He sipped his own rum and played lightning games of speculation with himself. "Tell me about the Articles," he said.

"You put your mark to 'em, mate," said Sparrow. "What about them?"

"'Tis all this business of the Majority," said Jack Shaftoe. "What should I, a simple soldier, know of matters at sea?"

Jack Sparrow had snorted at the word 'simple'. "The Majority," he said, "is the crew, or the greater part of it; and 'tis our ship, with our laws, and our officers chosen by said Majority."

"So if more than half the crew change their minds about who's best fit to be, let’s say, First Mate," said Shaftoe, with his most innocent expression, "then that man's First Mate no longer?"

"Aye," said Sparrow.

"And otherwise he's First Mate until he steps down, or -- should he be ambitious -- up: is that right?"

"Aye," said Sparrow, raising his cup to Jack Shaftoe and then knocking back the contents. Jack did the same.

"Interesting bloke, that Barbossa," he said. "Known him long, have you?"

"Long enough," said Sparrow. "A fine navigator; a good pirate."

"Takes what he wants, I expect," said Jack Shaftoe. "Would there be more of that rum, at all? Loosens a man's throat wonderfully."

Sparrow grinned and poured him more rum, filling the leather jack to the brim so that it slopped over onto the battered crate that served as a table.

"I'll speak frankly," he said, leaning close enough that Jack could feel his breath. "If a man were stirring dissent on board my _Pearl_ , would you see fit to tell me?"

"I doubt I'd need to," said Jack Shaftoe, looking Sparrow straight in the eye. "Since you know it."

"I do know it," said Sparrow, scowling horribly; but in the next moment his merry smile was back, like a mask, and Jack matched it. "So, Mr Shaftoe, tell me --"

Jack turned his head -- it was surprisingly difficult to look away from Sparrow -- and glared meaningfully at the door, as though he could see through the solid, pitchy wood and perceive someone lurking, ear to the boards, beyond.

Sparrow glanced down, and Jack followed his gaze, but he was only looking at the black timbers of the floor, where they weren't covered by a tatty foreign carpet. "Come and sit by me, Mr Shaftoe," he said softly.

This was, of course, exactly the sort of thing that Jack had dreaded, and he drew breath to make his opinions on the matter abundantly clear; but there was more of the conspirator than the seducer in Sparrow's expression, and he was looking -- no, glaring -- not at Jack Shaftoe, but at the door, and the presumed eavesdropper that it hid.

Jack Shaftoe chuckled, and stood up, ducking his head to avoid the low beams. The _Black Pearl_ pitched as he negotiated the narrow space between the cannon and the bulkhead, and thus his arrival on the bunk was rather more precipitate than he might have wished. Sparrow's hand steadied him, and he leaned close. Shaftoe could smell the rum on his breath, the tar on his hands, and the general miasma of skin that had been cleansed, in recent months, solely by immersion in sea-water; Sparrow smelt better, or possibly just less, than Jack's mates.

"When's it going to happen?" Sparrow said softly. His mouth was right next to Jack's ear.

Jack took another healthy draught of rum. "Dunno," he said. "Couple of days."

Sparrow jerked his head towards the door. "Does he think you'll come out for him?"

"Who says I won't, mate?" said Jack, belatedly remembering that there were two sides, here, to play against each other.

Sparrow chuckled, and Shaftoe flushed at the thought of what that eavesdropper would imagine was happening in the captain's cabin. "You've told me a lot," murmured Jack Sparrow, "for someone who's going to betray me."

"I'm no traitor!" protested Jack hotly, wondering when the pirate's opinion of him had started to matter. Perhaps there was something in the rum, or in Jack Sparrow's breath, that stopped his more pragmatic self from taking over. Perhaps it was simply that Sparrow, as captain, would be ever so much more entertaining than Barbossa.

It was at this moment -- sitting on a pirate's bunk with the pirate breathing warm against his neck; with a jack-ful of excellent rum, doubtless dishonestly come by, in his hand; with talk of mutiny and double-dealing, that Jack recognised his intention of staying aboard the _Black Pearl_ , turning pirate and forsaking the land. At least for now.

And, having reached that point, there was nothing stopping him from nudging Sparrow in the ribs, gesturing at the knife in his own belt, and saying, low and intense, “Let me take care of ‘im for you. Straight over the side on the night watch --”

Sparrow’s eyes were all black in the gloom, and he was smiling back at Jack most devilishly. “But you hardly know me, mate,” he murmured. “Why?”

“Er,” said Jack, wondering what Sparrow wanted to hear. It was probably not a good time to mention the Imp of the Perverse, and its marvellously creative suggestions for a life less mundane; Sparrow would surely think him a lunatick, and Jack was hoping to save that particular excuse in case he needed to leave the _Black Pearl_ , and her company, in a hurry. “Why not?” he countered at last, rather petulantly.

“Leave it, Mr Shaftoe,” said Sparrow, still smiling directly at Jack. He swayed back, and Jack tensed; but there was only the small, rough noise of a struck flint, and light blossoming in an apple-shaped glass lantern that hung above the bunk. Jack stared at it stupidly as Sparrow flopped back down beside him.

“You’ve no reason to be loyal to me,” said the pirate. “Not yet, anyway,” he added, with a wink.

“But –“ said Jack helplessly. Sparrow’s dark gaze was making him hot, as though he’d done something wrong; he looked down into the black circle of rum in his cup, in search of an answer.

“Leave it, Jack,” Sparrow repeated. “Or I’ll never know who’s in it with him.”

“I’m with you,” said Jack, hoping that the simple-minded honesty of the assertion would counterbalance his omission of the proper title, ‘Captain’, about which Sparrow was usually so insistent.

“I know it,” said Sparrow, and his smile this time was sharp and dangerous.


	4. Navigational Errors, ch 4

  
  
Tonight, of all nights, Jack Sparrow refused to let anything distract him. There was a new moon, bright as the clipped edge of a silver coin, hanging above the eastern horizon at the far left of the stern-cabin window; to the right, the last of the sunset disappeared into the western sea. The sky was a deep, clear amethyst, and phosphorescence boiled in the _Black Pearl_ 's pale wake. Jack's attention was firmly fixed, to all appearances, on the hand of cards he'd been dealt. Occasionally he glanced around at the other players -- Bill, Barbossa, Joe Turk -- or took another hefty draught from the leather bottle in his hand.

Nine, ten, Queen, King of Hearts, and a scattering of Clubs. This was not the time to wax philosophical on the tale that any fortune-teller could compile from those cards, and anyway it'd all be stupidly romantic, a mish-mash of knightly conflict and fair ladies and the like. He'd rather have the _Pearl_ for Queen than any simpering miss; and tonight he'd every intention of regaining her. True, she had not yet been taken from him, but she'd been compromised, and that was a slight to her captain as much as to the ship herself.

The bearded, red-haired King of Hearts beamed up at him as though his whole business was a done deal.

From the winning hand he wanted, he was missing only the Jack -- which concept, logically extrapolated not by any fairground Gypsy but by Captain Jack Sparrow himself, did not indicate any loss of self or wavering of purpose, but rather the absence of Mr Jack Shaftoe, who Sparrow was nearly certain would take his part tonight.

Too easy to let himself drift, thinking of how Shaftoe'd sat on Jack's bunk the other night, letting Jack ply him with Demerara rum. How gloriously suspicious he'd looked at first, when Jack beckoned him over so that they might speak without being overheard! It might as well have been a challenge, and Jack loved challenges. He was sure he could've brought Shaftoe around to his own way of thinking: nothing but a little mutual pleasure between shipmates, honestly, and nothing to make either of us any less than we are.

Though, when had that become something that he wanted to do? When had he started to think of Jack Shaftoe as anything more than another potential member of the _Black Pearl_ 's company? Perhaps when he'd seen Shaftoe simply _watching_ Barbossa (and Jack wanted, badly, to scowl and snarl at his treacherous Mate; not only for Bermuda, but for everything before and since) and not letting himself be drawn in. Perhaps only when he'd had Jack Shaftoe alone, in his cabin, all honest and open -- surely just another pretence, but an appealing one -- speaking, and listening, and turning the full force of his keen wit upon Jack's every utterance.

And oh, the gradual softening of Shaftoe's stance, his increasingly slow and insincere flinches as Jack had let the motion of the _Black Pearl_ pitch and roll him towards Shaftoe's end of the bunk. Nothing forced, nothing deliberate, just the growing proximity of the two of them, as Jack Sparrow's sensible, captain-like self spoke softly of his First Mate's mutinous plans and how they might be confounded, while Jack's baser part looked at Shaftoe's strong features -- broad, smiling mouth, bright blue eyes, crooked nose, all cast into shadow by the soft lamplight -- and the sheer intelligence that informed them, and panted after him in an unfortunately literal way.

"Hot in here, ain't it?" Shaftoe had said, and then, more softly -- to confound some imagined listener, though any man with his ear pressed to the door must surely have withdrawn, confident that nothing more unusual than sodomy was taking place -- "So you reckon us changing sides'll tip the balance?"

"He's hardly going to tell me his plans, now, is he?" Jack'd said. "You, Mr Shaftoe, can be my agent of intelligence; and no doubt he'll think that the four of you, willing and strong and --" Another swig of rum to suppress _that_ image. "You'd be excellent additions to his party. If you reckon you can sway your mates, that is."

Now _that_ had been a challenge, too, and Shaftoe's broad, cocky smile had shown that he would rise to -- no, Jack corrected his innuendo-ridden mind, would _accept_ it.

"Wait and see," he'd said, and they had grinned at each other in the soft lamplight: then Sparrow had dismissed Jack Shaftoe to his own affairs, having discovered in himself an urgent need for some privacy in his bunk -- especially while the heat and odour of Shaftoe's presence lingered there.

Jack took another parsimonious swig from his bottle. Better they should think him drunk. The _Black Pearl_ rocked gently as the helmsman, up on deck, set a more north-easterly course. Barbossa, across the table, was laughing at something Bill Turner had said; but Jack was surer of Bill than of anyone. He glared at Barbossa anyway, remembering again how beguiling, how very agreeable the man had been when the _Black Pearl_ was docked at Bermuda. Perfidious bastard.

"What's that, Jack?" Barbossa called, grinning his rotten-toothed grin. He'd tied back his red hair in an emerald-bright bandana that brought out the green in his eyes. Perfidious, Jack reminded himself, forcing a smile of his own.

"Your turn, mate," he said cheerfully, with his hand on his dagger, just out of sight. No one was close enough to stop him, if he lunged across the card-table now. Barbossa wouldn't fall easy, Jack was sure of it; but he knew enough anatomy to make the first blow count.

He did not move. They had a plan -- nay, a Strategy -- and Jack would stick to it until it proved useless. And maybe a little beyond, for let no man say that Jack Sparrow gave up easily.

The next deal brought Jack the Jack of Hearts, who looked nothing at all like Mr Shaftoe, or, excepting the beard-braids, like Jack himself; but he snatched up the pasteboard card greedily, and laid out his hand, lolling back in his chair and motioning for the others to hand over his winnings.

... And now it began. Barbossa was on his feet immediately, with a horse-pistol pointed right at his captain's face; the Bosun, and Koehler, and Smith, pointing their own weapons -- very slowly, it seemed to Jack, as though the whole ship had somehow sunk beneath the waves and they were breathing water without knowing it -- at Bootstrap, and at Joe. Outside the window, the silver moon seemed to roll across the sky as the ship turned. Battle was joined: the enemy had declared himself.

"You may keep your winnings, Jack," Barbossa announced, beaming around at his fellow mutineers, "for I'm taking command of the _Black Pearl_."

"Oh aye?" said Jack Sparrow, forcing himself to lounge, relaxed and boneless and unthreatening. It had been a mistake, he'd been a fool to trust --

Right on cue, with better timing and more effective effects than most playhouses would have managed, came the sounds of a number of muskets being primed by competent hands; the alarming smell of gunpowder; the growl in Shaftoe's voice, and the command in Jemmy Taylor's -- sullen sod he might be, scowling at Shaftoe, but he'd been a soldier, right enough -- as they desired Barbossa's men to drop their weapons upon the deck.

From outside the stern cabin came a generalised commotion, as of the same transaction being repeated with variations. Someone fired a pistol; someone went overboard; someone screamed.

Jack ignored it all, for now. He brought his own pistol to bear on his First Mate, and grinned lazily, and said, "Of course I'll keep the winnings, mate, for you won't need money where you're going."

"To me, men!" cried Barbossa; he had a powerful voice, much deeper than Jack's, and there were a number of answering cries from the deck. But nobody came.

"Ship's company on deck!" ordered Jack, infuriated by the look of baffled hatred -- _stupid_ hatred -- on Barbossa's face. He waited until they had all filed out, the mutineers ungently guided by Shaftoe and his mates, and looked at Bill Turner.

"I'm sorry, Captain," said Bill, and Jack shot him a swift smile, grateful for the reminder of the rank he'd near lost.

"You were right, mate," he said. "Sorry I doubted you."

"Yon Shaftoe lad'll bear watching," said Bill softly, and not entirely approvingly, as they went up the companionway.

"Don't I know it," muttered Jack Sparrow, not looking back at his friend in case his expression revealed too much. He refused to think about Jack Shaftoe until this night was over.

The _Pearl_ had dropped her anchor, and lay rocking gently on the dark water; her black sails had been reefed, and the sailors had come down from the yards. Up on deck the mutineers -- some unexpected faces amongst them, and Jack scowled at this evidence of his own misjudgements -- had been shepherded into a huddle in the waist of the ship. None of them were armed, but the men who surrounded them were bristling with weapons. Jack Sparrow ascended to the quarterdeck, very careful not to twitch or flinch or look aside as he walked through the captive group. He half-expected to hear Bill or Joe dealing with a troublemaker or two in his wake, but he reached the top of the stairs without incident.

There were around twenty mutineers, rather less than half the ship's company; for which Jack silently thanked his lucky stars, for a majority would've meant that he'd lose the _Pearl_ anyway, as soon as anyone called for a vote on the matter. As it was, most of the _Black Pearl_ 's crew had stayed loyal to him -- which made him want to embrace them all, man by man -- and they were standing around, doing guard duty and looking suitably righteous about it. The new lads, the men who'd come over from the sugar-ship, looked grimmer and more competent than many of the long-serving crew, and Jack wondered for a moment what he'd let loose on his ship. But then, without them he'd not have recognised the mutiny in time to prevent it.

And _that_ recognisance led his eye to Jack Shaftoe, who made a striking figure, with Barbossa's horse-pistol in his right hand and a blood-streaked cutlass) in his left. There was a long, shallow cut on Barbossa's forearm, straight through his black coat and bright red -- formerly white -- shirt. Shaftoe, who Jack knew for a fact hadn't been sailing tropical oceans for more than a couple of weeks, was recounting a long tale, full of exemplary detail, about sharks and their taste for blood.

"That'll do, Mr Shaftoe!" ordered Jack, but he couldn't help grinning. His smile faded as he met Barbossa's gaze, though, and for a moment the ship seemed empty and silent, save for the two of them.

"You call yourself captain --" Barbossa began, and a couple of the men moved towards him with repressive expressions. Jack waved them back.

"What's your grievance, Barbossa?" he snapped. "Unequal shares of the prizes? Something in the Articles that wasn't to your taste? Didn't like the food? For that latter case, I'd recommend you take it up with the cook."

The cook, Black Davies, hefted a boarding-axe and looked meaningfully at Barbossa. Some of the men -- the ones holding weapons -- laughed. Those being threatened kept quiet, and Jack Sparrow tried not to look too closely at their expressions.

"Well, mate? I'm waiting."

"Not enough pirating, Jack," said Barbossa genially, with that broad smile that he'd always, until now, seemed to reserve for his captain. "Too much of this reading and charting, letting prizes go, creeping around in the dark instead of striking fear into the hearts of --"

"There's no need to prey on fishermen and shopkeepers," said Jack Sparrow icily. "You swore you'd follow me, and you've broken your oath because -- though I told you I'd a great and marvellous plan, though I promised you Spanish gold for the taking with hardly a moment’s risk to ourselves, though I told you how it would come out -- you were too bloody greedy to wait." He let the sentence hang, and the mutineers muttered amongst themselves. "Well, Barbossa, I've no place for you aboard my ship -- for the _Black Pearl_ is mine, not yours, and never shall be so."

"What's your punishment, then, Jack?" said Barbossa; and Jack saw him glance from Koehler to Ragetti, and knew that there was more, yet, to this mutiny.

"I'm sending you ashore," he said cheerily, gesturing with his pistol at the moonlit ocean.

The mutineers looked around, jostling each other as they searched for the telltale black shapes of islands against the night sea.

"What's the nearest port?" asked Ragetti, scowling at the look Barbossa gave him.

"Why ask me, gentlemen?" said Jack. "You don't trust my word on it. _I_ know where we are -- or at least," he clarified, beaming at them all, "I think I do; but maybe I'm wrong, eh? And after all, gentlemen, I was plainly wrong when I chose you all to share the treasure of Cortez, for I thought you men of your word, _then_ : so who's to say I have our reckoning right?"

He paused, as though in thought; then waved the thought away. "Nah, my old mother always used to say we must learn by our mistakes. And so shall we all."

"We just want to know where you're setting us ashore," said the Bosun obstinately, with his jaw clenched so tight that it must hurt. He'd never cared for Jack Sparrow's sense of humour.

"Right here, gentlemen," said Jack cheerfully.

The mutineers started cursing and arguing, and only the sharp sound of a pistol-shot silenced them.

"But there ain't any here!" cried Ragetti.

“That’s murder, Jack Sparrow, and you know it,” said Barbossa. “We’re miles from land!”

The mutineers all looked to him eagerly, as though he’d provide them with salvation even now. Jack Sparrow gripped his pistol so tightly that his hand hurt; but it was Barbossa’s way, not his, to lead by threats.

"Hush!" he said instead, hand raised: and in the silence they could all, surely, hear the booming of surf on a reef, and the gentler sound of waves breaking on a sandy shore.

The cursing and arguments broke out again, and in the midst of it all Barbossa stood aloof, bending a deadly gaze upon his captain.

"There's land there," said Jack, eyes narrowed, "never mind what Mr Barbossa says. Slack of you, mate, not to notice a change of course; but then, you never did have much feel for my lovely _Pearl_ , did you?" Important not to let himself think of Bermuda. "It's a busy enough passage; chances are you'll see a ship in the next week or so. Oh, and I've had the brig cleared out." It had been full of spare sails and lumber. "Should take ten of you, at a pinch. Perhaps you'd care to draw lots. Not you, Barbossa," he added, and levelled his own pistol when the other man began to object. "Mr Turner, if you'd run the plank out?"

Abruptly Jack Sparrow felt very tired, and horribly sober. Easier to shoot them all and nevermore have to watch his back. Easier to pitch them all overboard and let the sharks pick and choose; though there truly was an expansive, if featureless, island -– more of a sandbar, to be honest -- no more than half a mile to the north of the ship, surrounded by reefs and shoals that represented a considerable Hazard to Navigation. Bringing the _Black Pearl_ in by night had been a gamble, but Jack played to win.

Easiest of all to pretend he hadn't noticed Jack Shaftoe eyeing the back of Barbossa's head in such a speculative and coolly professional manner. He scowled at Shaftoe, and Shaftoe scowled back as though they were equals: but he lowered his pistol.

"It isn't over between us, Jack Sparrow!" Barbossa called as Bill and Joe led him to the plank.

Jack shrugged. "Don't I know it, mate. But your time on the _Pearl_ ; now, _that's_ over...”

And now they must all watch as man after man went, shrieking (and, in Barbossa's case, spouting dire warnings), to the end of the plank and, splashing, into the balmy ocean. Most of them had minor wounds, but if there were any sharks in the vicinity they must have been asleep, for although there was screaming it was not especially agonised. The moon was on the horizon by the time the last oaths and splutterings had faded into the gentle roar of the waves.

"Lock 'em up," said Jack to Joe and Bill, nodding his head at the remaining prisoners. "Give 'em some water and set a guard. Men!"

The rest of the crew, variously tending their own lacerations or settling bets, shuffled into slightly more attentive positions.

"We'll review the Articles tomorrow. Any man who wants to leave the company may do so when we dock. The --"

"Would that be a real dock, Captain? On land?" said Tom Flinch eagerly. The men -- most of who had encountered Tom, and his unseaworthy stomach, in the course of their daily business -- roared with laughter, or perhaps with simple relief from tension.

"For you, mate," said Jack Sparrow, "dry, solid land."


	5. Navigational Errors, ch 5

  
  
It took Jack Shaftoe nearly a whole day to identify -- or rather to categorise -- the malaise that had blighted him since the aborted mutiny. He'd thought it a physical illness, the sort that came and went with monotonous regularity in any close-quartered group of men, such as a regimental company or a pirate crew; and he'd resigned himself to sitting (or lying, as may be) and sweating, or shitting, or vomiting out whatever had disturbed him. But as the day wore on -- as the reduced crew groused and complained about having to work harder to cover for the men who'd been abandoned on an uncharted sandbar somewhere behind them in the night, or those who were crowded below-decks in the brig, making complaints of their own about food and water and the general inequity of life -- Jack began to suspect that what blighted him was not a tangible ailment at all. It was an _emotion_ , and as such Jack looked upon it with deepest suspicion.

Emotions were, as far as he could ascertain, of no use to anyone, except perhaps characters in theatrickal productions; they served only to confuse people (mainly of the female persuasion) and to overcomplicate life. They had no function. They were, above all, not something to be spoken of.

So it was natural, when Bootstrap commented sympathetically on Jack Shaftoe's ill-tempered behaviour, for Jack to snarl and snap, and generally insist, with transparent dishonesty, that all was well.

Bill frowned at him. He was wearing a different shirt today; this one was composed of green and blue scraps, some of them floral in nature, and it offended Shaftoe mightily. "If you've a problem with the captain's choices," said Bill, oblivious to the offence he was causing, "best take it up with him."

Sparrow had appointed Bill as First Mate, and, try as he might, Jack Shaftoe could see nothing amiss with this decision.

"An' if you reckon he shouldn't have left Barbossa and the rest of them alive, you'd better mention that to him, too. I'm sure he wouldn't begrudge you a musket and a row-boat to go after them." And on this merry note, Bill chuckled, clapped Jack on the shoulder and went off towards the poin-- towards the bow.

Jack snarled after him, wordlessly. It was none of that; but, with Bill asking those questions, he had a better idea of the answers he might give, if he were asked at a moment when truthfulness seemed more interesting than the alternatives.

He was disappointed.

He'd expected change, and he'd got it; he had no grievance with Bill's appointment as First Mate, or with Joe Turk as Bosun, or with any of the other appointments and disposals made by Jack Sparrow, newly reconfirmed as captain and having a spring in his step and an especially pleased smile to show for it. But there was something else, something indistinct, that he'd wanted to change, and if Bill had paid him a guinea for it, he still couldn't have said what that something might be.

Now here he was on board a pirate ship, sailing across a sun-drenched ocean towards a land where the women (according to Bill's account) were exotic, friendly and straightforward. Despite the recent reduction in the company's numbers, there were still more than enough of them to take care of the smooth running of the ship. The work wasn't hard, even when it could not be avoided, which was not often. Tom Cox, who'd been crewing on smuggling barques out of Dunkirk when Jack first met him, had given them all a few useful lessons on the art of idling -- the nautical term for looking busy while doing nothing at all, something which Jack had perfected in other contexts during his regimental days. Life on the _Black Pearl_ had much to recommend it, and the opportunities it offered for sitting around in the tropical sun, easing out from under the hangover afforded by the previous night's rum, bragging and card-games, were plentiful. And yet Jack Shaftoe -- or perhaps Jack's familiar Imp -- was not content.

Perhaps it was the Imp that was ill. Perhaps these 'feelings' were actually Imp-sicknesses, afflicting his ethereal companion just as the flux or the pox might have laid Jack low. Jack reflected on this, and on several other matters, as he picked apart the rope he'd spliced earlier.

"Missing our old mate Barbossa, Mr Shaftoe?" said a voice from above him, and Jack angled his head to squint up at the _Pearl_ 's captain. "Or dreaming of the day when you can set foot on dry land again and turn your back on piracy?"

"Certainly not," said Jack, grinning at Sparrow. "Getting quite a taste for life at sea."

"Bloody landlubber! This is life on the village pond, mate," scoffed Jack Sparrow. He did not look like a man who'd almost lost his ship to mutineers. His smile was as ivory-and-gilt, and as broad, as ever, and he leaned against the side of the ship carelessly, not bothering to keep an eye on any of the sailors as they went about their business. He appeared blithely carefree, but Jack Shaftoe, who had never made a profit from anything in which he had not first invested a healthy amount of curiosity, knew that Sparrow sat up late in his cabin, talking to Bill; sometimes, even, without copious quantities of rum. In another man -- another pirate, at any rate -- he'd have suspected them of being, so to speak, especially close and affectionate friends; but, frankly, it was difficult (not to mention unwholesome) to think of Bill in any such situation. Bill reminded Jack Shaftoe of his distant brother Bob, ever the more sensible of the two of them, who had acted as a sort of counterweight to the delicious suggestions of the Imp of the Perverse. It seemed unfair that Jack Sparrow should have a steadying influence at his beck and call, what with Bob Shaftoe being so very, uselessly, far away.

The correct response to Jack Sparrow's amiable insult (whispered a faint memory of Bob) would probably have been to grin and agree that yes, indeed, he was a landlubber, and never likely to be half the sailor that Jack Sparrow was; that this halcyon weather had spoilt them all, and that they'd be puking their guts out as soon as there was a bit of a blow.

Jack Shaftoe managed the grin, but it was accompanied by a rude gesture and a remark about people who thought that having salt-water for blood gave them some special dispensation.

"Quick enough to stow away like a rat on that wallowing tub of a sugar-ship, weren't you now?" Sparrow reminded him genially. "How's it feel, being out in daylight with a merry band of pirates who'd chop you into shark-meat soon as look at you?"

Jack, who was still proud of his underappreciated story-telling efforts, vis-à-vis sharks, on Mutiny Night, snorted and leapt to his feet, kicking aside the abused rope-work. "Drop 'em in a Southwark stew," he suggested, "and we'll see how many of 'em last the night with the shirt on their backs."

Jack Sparrow laughed at him, tilting himself back against the ratlines with a smooth, elegant sway that reminded Shaftoe of nothing so much as the sort of whore he couldn't afford, back in London. He might not be able to think of Bill Turner as a committed sodomite, but his captain was another matter. Not, of course, that Jack cared one way or the other, since Sparrow had never made any overtures of that sort.

"Bloody landlubber," said Sparrow again, and he winked at Jack Shaftoe in what would have been a thoroughly unsettling way, except that it was delivered with such good humour. "Have you made it up to the masthead yet? Or are you afraid of heights?"

"Race you," said Jack Shaftoe readily enough, and sprang for the shrouds.

As a matter of fact, he _had_ visited the top of the mainmast, more or less the first day aboard; having spent a considerable part of his youth ascending and descending ropes at some speed (often with something much more immediately threatening than a lunatick, and possibly lecherous, pirate behind him), neither the height nor the means of ascent held any particular terrors for Jack. Speed, however, was another matter entirely, and he gritted his teeth as Jack Sparrow swung himself around, ridiculously over-confident, in a way that should have splattered his brains (if any) over the black deck so far below, and scrambled like an especially lithe and well-knit monkey onto the main topmast crosstrees. He steadied himself with a careless arm crooked around a shroud.

"Need a hand, mate?"

Jack reached up: and an instant later found himself dangling a hundred or more feet (he had never bothered to work out the height of the mainmast, and it was a bit late now) above the ants on the deck, as Sparrow swung him out into the air. All that air, blue and clear and full of sun. There was a great deal of it between Jack Shaftoe and anything else. His hand tightened convulsively around Sparrow's bony wrist.

"Could let you go, mate," said Jack Sparrow conversationally, grinning a demoniac grin; but he was already swinging Shaftoe back onto the crosstrees beside him, or rather letting Jack's own weight carry him up against the mast as the _Black Pearl_ rolled slowly on the gentle Atlantic swell.

Shaftoe hooked one arm around the nearest rope, and flailed at Jack Sparrow with the other, not really expecting to hit anything. Sparrow, he realised, was -- at the very least -- beset by an Imp of his own, who might well have found it amusing to toy thus with Jack Shaftoe. Sparrow was hardly to blame, at any rate; Jack had to admit that, were the circumstances reversed, he'd have found the opportunity equally irresistible. And here was Jack Sparrow, beaming at him with what might almost be termed affection (but was more likely recognition of a fellow Imp-host) even as he blocked Jack's half-hearted punch and pulled him close, not quite off-balance but hardly a fighting stance either.

"Better than the brig, Mr Shaftoe?" said Sparrow, leaning close; and Jack found himself thinking, all of a sudden, of Bootstrap Bill's almost Bob-like stolidity, and how, though Jack Sparrow might have had something going with Barbossa, he certainly didn't have any such arrangement with his current First Mate: he was, in short, in the market. _That_ thought -- no doubt the product of one or t'other Imp, though actually it was possible that Sparrow hosted more than one; the rigging might be thick with them -- made Jack Shaftoe dizzier than his impromptu excursion out into the empty air, and he tightened his grip again. The rope did not complain, and Sparrow's gleeful smile broadened as Shaftoe clutched him with bruising force. Which was, probably, the exact opposite of a sensible response to those thoughts about what (and who) Sparrow did by night.

"A pretty scene, Captain," said Jack airily, detaching his hand from Sparrow's arm as though it had acted of its own accord, and gesturing at the blue Caribbean all around.

"Aye," said Jack Sparrow, gazing out at the broad ocean, and then down at the narrow deck of the _Pearl_ , with equal affection.

The two of them settled side by side, a hundred feet or so above the deck, letting the _Black Pearl_ rock them like rich men's children in a cradle. Sparrow produced his ubiquitous flask of rum, and they passed it between them. Ordinarily Jack Shaftoe would have regarded this as an ideal opportunity to draw information from the pirate captain; information that might make all the difference, come landfall, to him and his mates. But Sparrow, surprisingly, was silent: indeed, he looked half-asleep, leaning against the mast and staring out into the empty ocean towards the invisible coast of Brazil. This sort of contemplative silence was a rare treat -- never to be found, at any rate, down on deck or amongst Jack's mates -- and Jack let himself relax, though he kept half an eye on Sparrow, just in case.

From the deck far below, at last, rose the happy bellow of the cook, announcing the evening meal. Shaftoe blinked, and realised that an hour or more must've slipped by while he'd idly stared at the blue horizon and exchanged the occasional desultory comment with his captain. An hour of doing absolutely nothing: delicious luxury. Jack stretched lazily, grinning.

Beside him, Sparrow roused himself from his reverie. "Dinner! Excellent!" He pulled himself to his feet, letting the roll of the ship balance him, and turning to Jack with a courtly gesture. "After you, Mr Shaftoe."

It was a simple, irresistible image, and it came to Jack Shaftoe all at once, as though the Imp had planted the notion directly in his body, bypassing his brain. He found himself on his feet and grasping Sparrow's sinewy wrist, hard; and paused for a long, vivid moment, not so much to think about what he was doing as to savour the sheer irrationality of it. Then Jack leapt, dragging Sparrow after him -- with him -- into the void.

Now, Jack Shaftoe could not read, and he had never learnt his numbers, so he had never studied the science of gunnery. But years of careful observation of those who _had_ studied it, coupled with a sharp wit and the everyday experience of basic physics that any man in possession of his senses must acquire, quite unconsciously, by the age of six or so, had taught him a good deal about trajectories, angles, momentum and the like. Jack had leapt outwards, following the lateral roll of the ship, as strongly as he could; and he had leapt when the masthead had been swinging, like a pendulum in reverse, far to the starboard side -- perhaps seven feet away from the vertical. Additionally, Jack was elevated by the rush that he always felt when doing something really, really stupid; and it was not impossible that the heat of Jack Sparrow's aspersions upon Shaftoe's native wit -- or lack thereof -- were also helping to slow their passage through the air. There was also, of course, the counter-gravitational effect of, not one, but two Imps of the Perverse, busily flapping their metaphysical (and possibly metaphorical) wings as they gently lowered these matchlessly obliging hosts to the balmy tropical ocean. An ocean that was rapidly approaching, like a blue glass bowl. In the suddenly-contracting moment before the two of them -- Shaftoe still clutching Sparrow's wrist as though Sparrow, like his namesake, sported wings -- hit the water, Jack Shaftoe had time to wonder just how much weight any single Imp might reasonably be expected to support.

They hit feet-first: it was like jumping off a roof onto a paved street. Jack Shaftoe surged up out of the stinging salt water, gasping, and was immediately pushed back down. Jack Sparrow held him under until he saw white lights in the water all around him; he kicked and thrashed, but the pirate was surprisingly strong. "You bloody idiot!" he was yelling when he let Jack up for air. " _Why?_ "

Shaftoe was gulping air and laughing, not least at the sight of Jack Sparrow' unmutinied crew lining the rail, some of them pointing muskets, cutlasses, marlin-spikes and other implements at him, all of them scowling at him -- no doubt for what must've looked like an attempt to drown Sparrow, or at least shut him up for once and for all.

"Why not?" Jack managed eventually, spluttering. Sparrow was laughing too, spitting out salt-water and keeping a firm hold of Jack Shaftoe's threadbare shirt. He rolled his eyes at this supreme feat of illogic.

Bill chucked them a line and Jack clapped onto it quickly, before anyone could suggest leaving him there to drown.

"You just wait, mate," muttered Sparrow as they were hauled aboard. He righted himself and began to strip unselfconsciously, letting his soaking shirt and breeches drop to the deck. "I'll get you for this," he promised, grinning, slapping Jack's bare shoulder slightly too forcefully as he went aft to his cabin.

"Looking forward to it, Captain," said Jack Shaftoe guilelessly.


	6. Navigational Errors, ch 6

  
  
They'd left ten men -- late of the _Black Pearl_ 's company and now shipless, penniless and nursing the smarting wounds, physical and mental, of Barbossa's failed mutiny -- at various points along the Guianan coast east of Stabroek. It would've been easier by far to abandon them all in any single uncharted fishing village, but Jack Sparrow wanted their immediate futures to be as challenging as possible. Most of them could swim, and so he'd had Bill or Joe help them over the rail of the _Pearl_ as she sailed close inshore. Others had been turned over to local fishermen, with a shilling for their passage ashore, when the _Black Pearl_ dropped anchor to bargain for the day's catch. Some of the crew were remarkably vocal about the unjustness of this clemency, but Jack wasn't in the habit of cold-blooded murder. He'd let Barbossa live, and it would be unreasonable to slaughter those who'd followed him.

Nevertheless, it never hurt to listen to a pirate democracy, and right before docking was as good a time as any. Captain Jack Sparrow cheerily swayed and skulked around the familiar tar-stained deck of his sweet ship, sharing rum and plans and jokes with his crew. The _Black Pearl_ was in disguise, tonight; her infamous black sails had been stowed, and the sweeps were out -- two men to each -- carrying her, slow and stately, towards the end of the breakwater outside Stabroek harbour. They'd slung a length of painted canvas around her hull, and her gilded figurehead had been decked with a hastily chiselled wreath of laurel and a few strings of coloured beads. The banner at her stern (upon which the paint was still tacky, and bore the smears and marks of clumsy hands) proclaimed her as the _Dark Lady_. It was not a disguise that would fool those who knew the _Black Pearl_ \-- and her reputation had spread throughout the Caribbean -- but it would give any foolhardy Navy captain pause. Captain Jack Sparrow and his tatterdemalion pirate crew were not seeking trouble; not this time.

The lights of Stabroek -- or Georgetown, as the English were calling it now -- were shimmering over the water, multiplying as the last of the sunset died in the west. Jack scanned the crowded masts beyond the breakwater. There were plenty of ships moored or tied there, perhaps sheltering from the first signs of foul weather, but nary a ship of any of the Navies that visited here -- Dutch, French, English -- to blight their stay. So much the better; he'd no desire to retrieve any of his company from some ill-mannered Navy pressgang, or lose more good men to those tedious arguments 'twixt Navy and pirate about freedom, liberty and the reign of Law.

Stabroek was a busy port, and a favourite of Jack Sparrow's; originally Dutch, notionally ceded to England, and frequented by a peculiar admixture of merchantmen, privateers and adventurers, it was a place where it was easy to find good French rum, golden-skinned women and the spars, cordage and supplies required for the continued smooth sailing of the infamous _Black Pearl_. Easy enough, too, to recruit new crewmembers; they were twenty men down since the mutiny, not counting the Englishmen from the _Henrietta Marie_ , and Jack liked to keep his ship well-manned.

A couple of that little gang were making their final farewells now. Tom Flinch was already at the rail, gaunt and excited, with his few possessions -- a spare shirt, a flask of rum and a long knife -- in a net at his feet. Jack and Bill had tried to persuade Tom to stay, but there was no helping it. He had not taken to piracy; had, in fact, been heard to say that he'd walk back to England rather than spend another day afloat. He was a good man, and Jack did not like to disillusion him with talk of charts, and longitude, and the spherical nature of the world. He'd work out soon enough that there was water to be crossed, whichever route he took, between Stabroek and London Town. And besides, Jack could vaguely recall his dear old mother insisting that every cloud was lined with silver -- as had been so amply proven in this case, where Tom Flinch's defection to dry land was polished to a lustrous shine by the imminent departure of Jemmy Taylor.

"Going to keep my mate company," Taylor had said, gruffly, when Bill Turner had asked him his intentions. He had scowled at Sparrow as though the pirate captain were to blame for the calm seas and good winds that had nevertheless reduced Mr Flinch to abject seasickness -- not to mention that one capricious lurch of the _Black Pearl_ while Jemmy was chipping round-shot, resulting in a nasty gash along the length of his forearm. Despite all this, Jack reflected, he'd taken Sparrow's side in the mutiny, and helped fling Barbossa's traitorous dogs into the brig. Couldn't be all bad.

"And you, Mr Shaftoe?" said Jack, leaning down quickly in the (futile) hope of catching Shaftoe off his guard.

"Me, Captain?" said Jack Shaftoe, big blue eyes wide with enviable innocence. He looked up from the hand of cards he'd just laid down on the deck; a good hand, though not so good as to arouse suspicion. The grubby sleeves of his shirt were pushed to his elbows, presumably to counter those baseless accusations of foul play, and the fine blond hairs on his tanned skin seemed to glow in the lantern-light.

"Wondered if you'd given any more consideration to the prospect of a life on the ocean wave," said Jack genially, swaying forward to proffer more rum.

"I'm torn," admitted Shaftoe, with a smile that Jack Sparrow did not trust at all. "Can't make up my mind 'til I've reacquainted myself with the pleasures to be found on land. A day and a night ashore: that's what I need."

"It's not a life sentence, mate," said Bill, who was smirking at his own cards. "You can call it quits any day you care to."

"Ah, but --" Did Shaftoe's gaze lock, briefly, with Jack Sparrow's? "-- I might find myself beguiled by the ocean. Next thing I'd be forgetting I'd ever lived anywhere save afloat."

"Plenty of us to remind you, given the way you reef a sail," Bill said, and there was a general chorus of laughter. Shaftoe, never one to hold himself in high regard, laughed as loud as any of them. He was learning fast and well -- like many another unlettered man that Jack Sparrow had observed, he'd an aptitude for retaining information -- but he didn't have Tom Cox's natural facility with spar and stay. Tom, mind you, had leapt at the chance to turn pirate.

"Anyway," said Joe Turk from where he was leaning against the rail, "'e can't leave now. Owes me three crown, 'e does!"

"I won it fair, you --"

"Prodigal, Mr Shaftoe," said Jack Sparrow, "not to mention profligate. But we divvied up the spoils last night, expressly so that you lads might claim your fair share of 'em before the parting -- the _possible_ parting -- of our ways. Might I enquire as to what dubious endeavour of yours makes you so eager for ready monies?"

Jack Shaftoe took a hefty swig from Sparrow's flask, and leaned back to return it to its rightful owner. "Well," he said, "I've a mind to get laid."

"Really?" drawled Jack. "You should've said something. I'm sure one of the boys'll oblige you, if you ask nicely."

The chorus, whistling and whooping, offered a commentary on Jack Shaftoe's fine, shapely arse, and a number of suggestions as to which members of the company might be up for a try of it. None of them, Jack was pleased to see, looked meaningfully at their captain. Discretion was the better part of so many things.

"Actually," said Shaftoe, raising his voice in order to be heard over the lewd Jamaican reminiscences being invented by Taylor and Cox, "I'm fussy."

"Aren't we all?" said Jack Sparrow, curling his bare toes against the warm deck. "When we can afford to be, any rate."

"I have to say, lads, that none of you have quite the qualities I tend to seek in a bedmate," said Shaftoe archly, with a look that he must surely have learnt while fending off lonely privateers in the taverns of Port Royal. A couple of the men were looking at Shaftoe appreciatively; Bill, meanwhile, was grinning at Jack himself, and Jack became aware that he was watching Shaftoe hungrily.

He scowled, and tempered his expression, not especially wishing to lay himself open to mockery. "What might those be?" he enquired.

"A refined manner and a womanly figure, Captain." Shaftoe made a show of looking him up and down. "Though I must say, _you're_ \--"

"Here's half a crown, Mr Shaftoe," interrupted Jack Sparrow, flipping him a coin. He'd seen that one coming. Bill was laughing his head off, though he was privy -- being an inveterate observer of his captain's whims and enthusiasms, and an old and loyal friend besides -- to certain closely-guarded secrets. "You've obviously been too long at sea. Oh, and Jack?"

"What?" said Shaftoe, grinning up at him as he caught the coin one-handed.

"That's a loan. Now, you laggardly lot!" Jack clapped his hands, and was instantly rewarded by rapt attention. "We'll moor inside the breakwater, in case it comes on to blow. All hands to bring the _Pearl_ in handsomely."

Jack Shaftoe was not work-shy; or, if he was, he knew how to hide it. When the card game broke up, he leapt to his feet, looked around for his mate Tom Cox -- a steady fellow, who'd already written his name, clumsy but legible, in the muster-book -- and went to lend a hand with the anchor. He was starting to move with the easy sway of an experienced sailor, and in Jack Sparrow's opinion this was an eminently desirable thing, as well as an excellent reason for Shaftoe to stay with the _Black Pearl_.

"The _Pearl_ needs good men," said Bill, following the direction of his captain's gaze and grinning. He generally found Jack Sparrow's amours amusing, though he'd scowled ferociously throughout the business with Barbossa.

"And bad ones, mate," said Jack. He was looking forward to giving Mr Shaftoe the opportunity to be bad. "Pirates, remember?"

"No different to that lass you made a fool of yourself over," said Bill, untroubled by his captain's appreciation of their latest recruit. He leant on the rail of the poop-deck, studying the tavern-lights as Jack nudged the helm, bringing the _Pearl_ slowly around the battery at the end of the breakwater.

"I'd be surprised if there weren't a few fundamental differences, Mr Turner," said Jack, leering. "Which lass would that be, anyway?"

"That blonde at the Bride," said Bill. "The one with the dress."

"Oh yes," said Jack, with a reminiscent smile. "Amber. Lovely girl." Actually, though, he could hardly bring himself to care about girls at the moment. Even the thought of a month's-worth of memorable nights with Amber, a cheerful and flexible young lady who'd given Jack Sparrow so very more than his money's worth (not to mention a hefty, and nigh untreatable, dose of the clap) wasn't enough to send more than a very mild frisson of lust -- more like appreciation, really -- through his veins. The lust was reserved (or so his subconscious seemed to be signalling, via a series of increasingly vivid dreams that woke him, aching, with his hand on his cock) for Mr Jack Shaftoe, with his yellow hair and blue eyes and easy amiability.

Last night the two of them, Sparrow and Shaftoe, had ended up alone together on deck, long after most of the crew had slung their hammocks for the night. Ordinarily Jack's libido would have had something to add to the proceedings, but he'd already promised himself a degree of discretion, at least until after Shaftoe'd had a fair chance at dry land. Besides, it'd been late, and the rum, not to mention the fat old moon, had lent a sleepy golden haze to everything, including Jack Shaftoe as he sat propped against the taffrail.

It wasn't the first time they'd stayed up late together, talking of the world and everything in it; life afloat, life ashore, Vagabonds compared to Pirates, the inequity of wealth and how each of them, if only given the chance, would rise above it all. Jack Sparrow, if anyone had asked, would have told them he was glad to be rid of Barbossa; but, to Bill, he'd almost admitted missing the man. Almost, though not quite; because Bill's steady, uncomplicated friendship suffered, and would always suffer, by comparison to the more riotous escapades that Jack had shared with his former First Mate.

Jack Shaftoe, on the other hand, seemed as wild as Sparrow himself; and, moreover, lacking in the envious, underhand streak that had left Barbossa washed up on that midnight cay. He was on easy terms with most of the crew, and quick to make amends when (as was bound to happen on a pirate ship) he offended anyone. And there was a vivacity, an aliveness, to him that made it hard to look away; though Sparrow, in the interests of avoiding popular ridicule, made a point of doing so.

"So, Jack, why'd you try to drown me?" Jack Sparrow had asked. He had been aiming for solemnity, though he gathered from Shaftoe's expression that he might have missed the mark.

Shaftoe had fixed him with a slightly cross-eyed gaze, and said serenely, "Strictly speaking, Captain, 'twasn't me." Since the mutiny, he had been punctilious about the use of Sparrow's title, if about little else, and Jack took it as a challenge; he'd have Shaftoe saying his name -- their name -- one of these days. They might mix themselves up, of course, but it was a risk that Jack'd take.

"Well, Mr Shaftoe, up at the top of the mast --" Jack gestured extravagantly. "Up there, 'twas just the two of us. Pray tell me whose notion that depraved leap might've been, if not yours? For you know, I'm nearly positive that it wasn't mine."

"That was the Imp," said Shaftoe earnestly, helping himself to Jack's rum. "The Imp of the Perverse, they call it. Surely you've heard tell of it?" And he had proceeded to recount a number of stirring adventures, none of which Jack Sparrow could now recall in any detail; all of them more or less the standard fare of the novels Jack Sparrow read when he could find them, and all of them reflecting rather poorly on everyone involved, saving -- of course -- Jack Shaftoe. "My brother Bob," said Shaftoe, smiling fondly and hammering the deck for emphasis, "'s always trying to talk me round to doing the sensible thing. Good man, Bob. My brother. But boring as hell."

"Well, he ain't here, is he?" Jack Sparrow had pointed out.

"Exactly," Shaftoe had said. "So I've only the Imp to guide me." He gave Jack another of those innocent, guileless looks, and suddenly Sparrow knew that there was something to be said, after all, for this notion of Imps. He could almost feel tiny claws digging in as the Imp leapt from Shaftoe's shoulder to his own ragged collar, scrabbling for a hold amid the beaded dreadlocks.

"Not him," murmured the Imp seductively, swiping its forked tongue over the curve of his ear. "He's too daft to know what he wants. Me, me!"

"It's a pretty phant'sy, Mr Shaftoe," said Jack Sparrow, abruptly consumed by the beauty of his new Strategy. "And surely as good an explanation as any for those moments when a man's driven towards a short life and a merry one --"

"A short life and a merry one!" agreed Shaftoe rather unsteadily, knocking back more rum.

"Me! Choose me!" shrilled the Imp, at a frequency only audible to amorous pirates (though Jack Shaftoe turned his head as though he'd caught an echo of it).

"And what the Imp proposes is as good as done, eh?" pursued Jack, recapturing his flask. The Imp, it seemed, had a taste for rum.

"Aye, there's no resisting it," sighed Jack Shaftoe happily, eyes drifting shut.

"Some things should never be resisted," murmured Sparrow -- hand to his heart, just to make it clear he was speaking of himself -- to his drunken companion, voice low enough that Shaftoe would've had to lean closer to hear it, if he'd still been conscious.

And then, strictly for the Imp, "Aye, we have an Accord."

Now, gliding into the broad harbour at Stabroek with a night and a day of liberty ahead of them all, Jack leaned against the wheel, and wondered how he might persuade this hypothetical Imp to come out in Jack Sparrow's favour; to bring Jack Shaftoe, willing and eager and not reluctant in the slightest, to Jack's embrace.

Perhaps it was the dusk, and the tricks it played with men's eyes; but, gazing at Jack Shaftoe where he stood at the capstan, Jack seemed to see a flicker, a glow, an indistinct shape atop Shaftoe's shoulder. Whispering? Suggesting? He blinked, and could see it no more.

But that did not mean that it was gone.


	7. Navigational Errors, ch 7

  
  
Stabroek seemed, to Jack Shaftoe, uncannily like Southwark, and Dunkirk, and Bristol riverside, though it was rather warmer and the girls wore proportionately fewer clothes. It _had_ been a while, what with Port Royal's dismal brothels full of runaway slaves and drab post-partum servant-girls, reeking of stale milk and more than usually prone to tears. There had been a lamentable lack of strumpets on board either the _Henrietta Marie_ or the _Black Pearl_ , and those few who had sneaked on board the sugar-ship had spent their voyage paying for passage, in the traditional way, in the officers' bunks. Probably, come to think of it, a sight more comfortable than the brig, where Jack had passed a week or so in Spartan solitude before the attack of the _Black Pearl_.

He'd had plenty of offers in Port Royal, true enough, but these had all involved randy buccaneers putting Jack into a position, or a series of positions, that he'd no intention of assuming. Jack had caught the occasional sidelong leer, at once invitation and appreciation, from the bolder members of the _Black Pearl_ 's piratical company; even her captain, the notoriously flamboyant Jack Sparrow, had produced a couple of baited, barbed remarks which would -- if Shaftoe had been thus inclined -- have reeled him in like the catch of the day.

But he _wasn't_ thus inclined, despite Jack Sparrow's gleam and shine, and the sheer love of life -- the French had a phrase for it, no doubt -- that phosphoresced from him in a steady glimmer. Decorative enough, too, but Jack Shaftoe was having none of it. Which was why he was here in Georgetown (or Stabroek, as Sparrow'd insisted on calling it) with wickedness on his mind, half a crown of Sparrow's money nestling in his pocket beside his own remaining shilling, and a sway to his step, after so long at sea, that seemed to draw the girls' eyes.

His mates sorted themselves out quickly enough, and Tom Flinch -- sentimental, no doubt, over their imminent farewells -- treated Jack to first turn with a hard-faced blonde who liked the look of both of them. That took the edge off it, anyway, and afterwards Jack was content to wander the streets, finding out how Stabroek worked. This was as good as any play, and twice as entertaining for being free: he ended up in the Anchor as rich as when he'd clambered out of the jolly-boat on the beach.

A couple of blokes from the _Pearl_ had found a table and some light company, and they were sharing a flask of rum and a couple of jugs of ale. "Having a good time, mate?" said Bill Turner, waving Jack over to join them. He'd put on a clean (or at least less filthy) shirt in honour of their landfall. It was, for the most part, yellow, and Jack settled himself so that he wouldn't have to look straight at it. Instead, he eyed the doxy in Bill's lap: on the skinny side, but pretty enough in a dark and sultry sort of way, and whatever she was doing was making Bill cheerful enough.

"Where's the captain?" enquired Jack, settling himself at the table.

"Off making trouble somewhere, I'd say," Bill told him, shrugging, and winced as his girl elbowed him. "Lovely place, innit?"

"Delightful," said Jack. "Puts me in mind of the dear old Bomb and Grapnel in Dunkirk, though the scenery there wasn't half as exotic."

"Exotic, mate?" said Bill with a laugh. "You ain't seen nothing yet. Here, love, why don't you just go and make friends with my mate Jack? He's done us all a good turn, and I reckon 'e deserves his reward."

Bill's hand disappeared under the table, and the girl squealed and narrowed her eyes at him: but she let him tip her out of his lap, and then undulated promisingly around the corner of the table to stumble artlessly against Jack and fall more or less on top of him, giggling. She'd spilt Bill's rum as she stood. Now she leaned forward to swipe her finger through the sticky amber pool, and slowly and daintily, eyes downcast, she licked that finger clean.

Bill scowled vilely and averted his eyes, muttering a curse. The rest of the men around the table -- Cotton, O'Brien, and a Neeger who Jack didn't know -- made appreciative noises, though none of them went so far as to spill their own drinks in hope of a repeat performance.

Jack laughed. He put his arm around the girl, and she obliged him by settling herself more comfortably in his lap. Her dress was silk, good heavy stuff, though it had been cut for a more curvaceous figure: still, Jack reckoned that the garment's quality was a favourable indication of her value in this particular marker. _Someone_ , at least, thought she'd earned it.

Of course, the rich gown might also mean that he couldn't afford her at all -- Jack had little notion of the going rate, though Tom Flinch's blonde had wanted a shilling up front -- but he'd come to that later, if at all. He tightened his arm around her waist and made her giggle again.

Back in London Jack, and a couple of his better-connected Vagabond friends, had made themselves of assistance to a Greek impresario, Mr Spiros, whose troupe of acrobatic dancers had found themselves temporarily without accommodation after the untimely demolition of the theatre where they'd been due to appear. Joe Davies had found them a room above a knocking-shop in Rotherhithe, and Jack had concocted an ornate confection of half-truths and misdirection, which meant that he had been the man who imparted this news to the Greek. Mr Spiros had been most grateful, and had directed his troupe to be grateful too. Jack had learned a great deal that week -- not least that there are limits to the contortions that the untutored body can perform, no matter how provocative the company. The girl on his lap (who was proving delightfully fidgetsome) reminded him of those acrobats: the feeling of muscle flexing against his hand, the way that he could feel the bones of her hips, the boyishly flat chest. As a general rule, Jack liked something to hold onto; but he was always willing to make exceptions for a pretty bedmate, and this girl was certainly pretty enough, with her red mouth and her long lashes.

O'Brien was telling a tall tale about a mermaid. "An' then, no word of a lie, she put it, my dick, put it in her mouth --"

"She never!"

"Well, she weren't going to do it no other way, was she?" demanded O'Brien. "What with bein' all fish, see, from the waist down --"

"Ain't they all!" said Cotton, and the men around the table all cheered and guffawed and offered their own observations on the matter. The girl in Jack's lap was outraged, or pretending to be; she hid her face in his neck, and he felt her tongue pressing against the vein behind his ear. It made him shiver and laugh. Good thing he'd taken Tom up on his offer vis-à-vis the blonde, or he'd have been embarrassing himself by now, what with her wriggling on top of him, and O'Brien's mermaid story, and the way this lapful had lapped the rum from her own finger, and that same rum burning in his veins and giving him the urge -- though he'd better watch it, in case it took away the _means_.

The girl was fiddling with his shirt-buttons now, not actually unfastening them but making it clear that her fingers were nimble enough to separate him from his clothes in a trice once they were alone. O'Brien finished his story, or rather lost track of it and let it trail away, and went out to take a piss: Cotton headed towards the bar in search of something else to drink.

Jack polished off the rest of the rum in his cup. His girl was wearing perfume, something heady and far too expensive for a tavern whore, and he was almost sure that there was going to be an unpleasant argument about money later if he didn't win her over somehow. Bill was giving him a funny look, but maybe he was just regretting the way he'd encouraged the girl to go to Jack. He wasn't the sort to start a fight about it, though -- Jack knew he had a wife and a boy, back in England, and that was where all his money went -- so Jack didn't especially mind if he wanted to hang around and watch. Maybe he could even borrow a couple of shillings off the bloke.

He stroked the girl's thigh -- strong and lithe, under the silk -- and she purred and pressed up against him, turning her face up for a kiss. Her dark eyes were limned with kohl as thickly as Captain Sparrow's (though rather more carefully applied) but it suited her exotic colouring. Jack was sure the red paint on her lips would come off on his mouth, and perhaps even on other parts of his body if he was lucky: though, with the bloody French Pox making itself known again, it'd be a miracle if he got much of _that_. Then again, she seemed keen enough, and remarkably forward, considering that Bill was still watching, and that there was a busy common-room between this table and the stairs that led to the private rooms. There was a big iron key on a string around her neck, and Jack stared at it fixedly for a little while, letting the noise of the tavern wash over him. Must be the key to a room upstairs, he thought. His blood surged at the image of the girl spread out on a bed -- or, more likely, on a grubby straw pallet -- half out of the silk dress, finally revealing the lithe body that he'd been feeling up so optimistically.

What the hell, thought Jack, and bent his head to kiss her.

For a second, or maybe two, it was all he had hoped it would be: hot and passionate, flavoured with rum and clove-oil and a sting of blood as the girl bit his lip. Jack liked them fierce, and his hands were about to tighten on her slim hips when he became aware that she was pulling away. Bill was making a racket about something in the background, slapping his hand on the heavy wooden table and shouting, or laughing; causing a commotion, anyway. And there was the glint of gold, _gold_ , from the girl's mouth -- which was one coincidence too many for Jack's liking.

Jack felt as though the world had tilted and tipped him off the edge. He managed a wordless yell, and got his hands around her wrists -- hands far too large, now that he thought about it, for a girl -- but Sparrow was sitting resistless in his lap, crowing with laughter.

"Lend us half a crown, mate," he said, not even attempting to break Jack's hold. "And don't tell me you've no money, for I lent it to you."

"I spent it," lied Jack recklessly.

Sparrow flicked a brief glance down at Jack's crotch, and writhed ever so slightly against him. "Really?" he purred in Jack's ear. "That says you didn't."

Jack's eyes widened at this fresh perfidy. "What d'you want money for?" he managed, his voice rather higher in pitch than before.

"A debt of honour, Jack." Sparrow twisted his hand free of Jack's unresisting grasp. "Which pocket?"

"Can't this wait?" protested Jack, flinching as the pirate's hand brushed against his aching cock. It might have been accidental, if Sparrow hadn't winked at him.

"Afraid not, Mr Shaftoe. You see, I owe Bootstrap here, on account of a little wager he made _me_ , being that I couldn't get a kiss out of you."

Jack went limp with disbelief and betrayal, or at least most of him did: he shot Bill Turner a murderous look over Jack Sparrow's bony, silk-clad shoulder, but Bill only grinned at him and raised his cup in a toast.

"Not to worry, lad," he said. "Jack likes 'is games. If I were you, I'd think up something he can't win at. Ah, thankee, Jack," he said to his captain, pocketing the blackened coin that had lately constituted the majority of Jack Shaftoe's personal wealth. "I'll leave you two to settle the matter, then."

The two of them were alone, or as alone as it was possible to be in a crowded tavern. Jack had a feeling that even _looking_ at Sparrow would commit him to unspeakable horrors; yet, like one of those trick paintings that beguiled the eye, Sparrow's transformation was uncannily, imbalancingly effective. He was clean-shaven, now, and the beard-braids were gone: Jack Shaftoe resisted the urge to run his finger along the hard, delicate curve of jaw thus revealed. Without the moustache, his mouth seemed wider, but no less pouting; that'd be the paint. Now that Shaftoe looked more carefully, he could see the faint shadow of stubble beneath the skin, and the little cuts where -- using a razor on board an anchored, but still rocking, ship -- Sparrow's hand had pressed too hard.

There was a woman's amber earring in his left earlobe.

Sparrow leaned close, and Jack pressed himself against the settle in a futile attempt to escape the -- the _monstrosity_ on his lap, but Jack Sparrow only said, "Is anyone coming this way?"

Jack glanced at the other customers, but no one seemed especially interested in them. Sparrow made a convincing whore -- he'd have to remind his captain of that, when the tables were turned again -- and Jack himself probably looked no different to any other customer. Nothing to see here. He shook his head.

"Let's go upstairs," Sparrow suggested. His smile might have looked innocent, from a distance.

"Are you --" Jack began, outraged. He did his best, for once, to ignore the squeaking, bouncing Imp on his shoulder, which was trying to persuade him that Jack Sparrow was worth listening to. It's the rum, thought Jack; the rum, or that bloody awful perfume. But his body wouldn't pay attention to his brain, not with Jack Sparrow, lithe and unnatural, sprawled over his lap like the most flexible sort of whore.

"Shhh," he said now, laying a single rum-scented finger across Jack Shaftoe's lips. "My clothes are upstairs -- unless you'd rather escort me back to the _Black Pearl_ like this? We'd make a lovely couple. And ..." His gaze dropped to Jack's pelvis again. "... you might want to do something about that little problem of yours."

"Depends what I can get in this town for a shilling," grumbled Jack, thinking hard of Bootstrap Bill's shirts, the pungent brig of the _Henrietta Marie_ , and Tom Flinch's inevitable reaction to fine sailing weather. None of it helped.

"Drunk, at least," said Sparrow against his ear, right next to where the Imp of the Perverse cavorted so suggestively. Jack writhed. "Let's have some more rum to take with us."

So Jack's last shilling went on a jug of rum -- not even to ply girls with, but to keep a pirate captain happy. As though dressing in women's clothing and playing practical jokes on horny sailors (Jack thought of himself as a sailor now, though not, yet, as a pirate) were not enough to entertain Jack Sparrow. He held his peace until they were upstairs. Sparrow had unlocked a door near the back of the inn, and ushered him into a small room with a single high window, no more than a foot square. Jack the cat-burglar could see that the window had been positioned in an effort to keep out the sort of person who might creep in and steal a gentleman's effects while he was otherwise engaged. The room contained a straw pallet with a stained cover, and a heap of clothing piled haphazardly by the door. It smelt of sweat and sex, and the heavy perfume that Sparrow had drenched himself in. The smell made Jack inexplicably hard, all over again.

Sparrow shook out the pallet, dislodging a couple of spiders, and sat down. He picked at a splinter that had lodged itself in his bare foot.

"So when were you going to stop?" Jack Shaftoe said belligerently, settling himself at the other end of the mattress. There was nowhere else to sit, but that didn't mean that he had any intention of getting any closer to Jack Sparrow, in that dress, than was absolutely necessary. No matter that just looking at the pirate made him dizzy, as though he were falling slowly from a cloud, or a mast, or the moon.

"Stop?" said Sparrow, eyebrow raised. He passed the jug to Shaftoe.

"Downstairs. If I hadn't realised."

"Perhaps I wasn't going to stop," said Sparrow, with a sly sideways look. He must have painted his eyelashes, or done whatever it was that whores did to make them look longer. Monstrous. Jack scowled, and Sparrow chuckled.  
  
"It's not funny," said Jack: at least, he tried to say it, but rum or frustration or that heavy, whorish perfume -- or perhaps his familiar Imp, whom he suspected of being in league with Sparrow -- had tangled his tongue, and he started to laugh helplessly.

Sparrow was laughing too. He grabbed Jack's wrist and got the rum off him before it became another stain on the mattress. Jack looked at him and laughed harder.

The worst thing about wasn't that Jack Sparrow could pretend to be a girl, and fool Jack Shaftoe. Useless to make excuses to himself, though it was only common sense to have them ready: he hadn't realised that Bill would be in on the joke, practically pimping the make-believe girl in his lap; he'd been distracted by Sparrow's lewd caresses; the rum was stronger than the stuff he'd been drinking lately. None of that held water, at least not to Jack. None of it changed the fact that the kiss, a kiss he'd paid _half a crown_ for, wasn't the worst of it.

Worse by far was the fact that Jack could look at Sparrow now, even knowing that he'd been comprehensively gulled, and still find him pretty. Beautiful. Much better than most of the girls he'd seen on the street earlier: much, much better than the hatchet-faced blonde who had pleased Tom Flinch so much.

Trying to explain all that to Sparrow was unlikely to go down well, though. So instead he leered, and said, "I paid my fare. I reckon you owe me."

"Depends how far you think half a crown'll take you, mate," said Sparrow, and he winked again.

"I'm not interested --" began Jack hotly, outpaced. He had a strong sense of history repeating itself; though none of his suitors, back in Port Royal, had worn a dress.

"You were, earlier."

Sparrow was not laughing any more, not even really smiling, and the way he was looking at Jack sent Jack's body into a definite state of readiness, prepared to fight or run away. Sparrow couldn't move fast, in that dress: he could be out of the inn by the time the pirate reached the foot of the stairs ... Jack didn't move. Running away was the least interesting option, right now. He looked back at Sparrow steadily, through a slight haze of rum. There was dance music coming from the inn across the square, and the lamp flickered and popped.

He didn't want to fight, or flee. He wanted -- or at least his body insisted that _it_ wanted -- to sprawl here and wait while Jack Sparrow shifted around on the straw pallet, dress a-rustle, and leaned down towards him. Perhaps it was predestiny, or the machinations of his companion Imp, or rum: but there didn't seem to be anything Jack could do about it, so he resolved to lie back and enjoy himself for a while. It would be pointless, not to mention churlish, to resist, and the kiss downstairs had been pleasant enough.

Besides which, Sparrow had planned this; Sparrow had _bet_ on this, or at least on the kiss that'd started it all, and he'd won the bet; which meant that he was going to tell the story any damned way he pleased -- and Jack squirmed at the possibilities -- regardless of what actually _happened_ in this small, stuffy room.

Jack continued to reassure himself that he was simply not bothering to resist, even when his tongue worked its way between Jack Sparrow's teeth, even when his arms rose of their own accord and pulled Sparrow down on top of himself. Sparrow felt hot and bony and hard (inescapably hard, in fact) through the tawny silk, and he planted his hands on the mattress, one on either side of Jack's face, and simply kissed him.


	8. Navigational Errors, ch 8

  
  
Passionate kissing, Jack Sparrow had found, made crowing with glee a nigh-unworkable option; but nevertheless he was crowing most gleefully, though silently, as he kissed Jack Shaftoe with all the heat, and hunger, and joy within him. It was not in Jack's nature to trap anyone -- man or maid -- who was unwilling to be ensnared; but oh, how he'd hoped that Jack Shaftoe, despite all his asseverations to the contrary, would turn out to be open to ensnarement.

It was a long kiss, and at some point during it -- like a sleeper turning without waking -- Shaftoe rolled them both over so that he was on top. He was pulling the silk away from Jack's shoulders, and between kisses he licked at the curve of Jack's neck, the lines of his throat, the hollow beneath his ear. The bitter tang of Jack's perfume (looted from the Spaniard's mansion before he'd ever encountered Jack Shaftoe, and pressed into service to disguise the manly reek of tropical sweat) made Shaftoe screw up his face, but he didn't stop applying his mouth to Jack's skin. It was utterly delightful, and Jack Sparrow couldn't help but congratulate himself on the success of his little masquerade.

On the other hand, Shaftoe was sure to grow tired of kissing and licking any minute now, and then he might well awaken from this hazy lustful dream and remember all his advertised oppositions to the whole notion of ... of, well, having this much fun with another man. With a pirate captain. With Captain Jack Sparrow.

Clearly it was up to Captain Sparrow -- not to mention Shaftoe's hypothetical but increasingly credible Imp of the Perverse, a very obliging co-conspirator -- to see to it that Jack Shaftoe did not regain his senses until those senses'd had been thoroughly exercised under Sparrow's tongue, and hands, and whichever other parts of his anatomy could be freed from the heavy silk to join the games.

For now, he let Shaftoe lie atop him, pushing his hard cock into the hollow of Jack's hip, tugging at the borrowed whore's dress until it was rucked and bunched around Jack's thighs, and Jack Shaftoe's hand was on the smooth skin inside his knee; and Shaftoe was still kissing him, tasting him, biting at his mouth and his neck until he might as well have been marking out a new territory on Jack Sparrow's skin. Slowly, slowly through the glee came drifting another notion: that Shaftoe, far from being unwilling company, might actually be _enjoying_ this. That he might have wanted this and never known it. That he was taking this whole elaborate theatrickal production, not as Sparrow's _revenge_ for that masthead leap, but as _reward_. That Shaftoe might be yearning to feel Sparrow's hands sliding up under his patched linen shirt, over the scar-striped skin of his back, around the curve of his ribs, until Jack could rub his thumb over a hair-ringed nipple and enjoy the sweet sensation of Jack Shaftoe arching breathlessly over him as though no one had ever done that before.

And Jack was most definitely, positively, wickedly enjoying himself. Even the faint worry that, imminently, Shaftoe would come to his senses and tear away, possibly decking Jack for his impertinence, merely added spice to the experience. That moment of reckoning seemed ever less imminent, too. Jack Shaftoe's breathing was ragged and noisy, his lips red with kissing as well as with Sparrow's painstakingly-applied paint, and he was lapping like an animal (or a witch's Impish familiar) at the salty sweat pooling at the base of Jack Sparrow's throat -- the room was warm, the company warmer -- as though Jack _tasted_ good.

But Jack couldn't help but feel that he'd somehow been unfair. This was such a foolish notion that, for a minute or more (a minute of gasping, grinding exploration; a minute where, like wrestlers, they were braced, matching one another's strength) he stopped paying any attention to his thoughts, and simply let his nerves, and muscles, and bones take him where they would. Perhaps Shaftoe was doing the same; perhaps it was no more than instinct, or Imp-action, that made his hand slide slowly up across Jack Sparrow's white-scarred thigh, so slowly that Jack's whole attention became focussed on that graduality. The thought of where Shaftoe's hand might end its journey -- and what might transpire thereafter -- brought Jack back to himself.

He rolled over, pinning Jack Shaftoe, who blinked up at him. If there was a problem, Shaftoe either hadn't noticed it yet, or didn't care.

And only a fool would bring it to his attention. So instead Jack Sparrow said, "How far d'you reckon half a crown'll stretch, Mr Shaftoe?"

* * *

Jack Shaftoe sprawled on the lumpy pallet, one hand on Sparrow's smooth, silk-sheathed waist and one hand re-claiming the soft skin on the inside of his knee, and wondered distantly at his body's independence. He'd never have thought -- indeed, never _had_ thought -- of doing anything so bacchanalian. Nonetheless, he was enjoying himself immensely.

Unfair of Sparrow to question him, though. "How should I know?" said Jack rather rudely (though with a complicit grin to soften the rudeness), letting his hand stray further on its course.

He knew what he wanted, at least in the immediate future. He wanted to smooth out the silk across Sparrow's hips and see the outline of Sparrow's cock, the hardness of which had been making itself known next to his own. He wanted to push his hand right up under the rustling silk and find out whether Sparrow was wearing anything except the dress: the notion of laying his hand on a hard cock, instead of the wet sticky heat he'd encountered under countless skirts to date, sent a peculiar, perverse surge of lust through his whole body. Some time during the kiss, this -- all of it, not just the bitter-musk-salt taste of Sparrow's dirty, tanned skin, or the feel of his breath against Jack's cheek -- had become what he wanted, or part of it.

But when Jack Sparrow leaned down over him, and drew his hot wet tongue along the curve of Jack's lower lip, and whispered against his mouth, "What d'you want, Jack?", he opened his mouth and found no words to say.

Instead he rocked his hips against Sparrow's, trusting his body to speak for him, and -- in case of mistranslation -- tilted his mouth for a kiss.

Sparrow raised himself on one elbow, just out of reach, and notched his thumb in the corner of Jack's mouth. "D'ye want me to stop?" he murmured.

Jack shook his head, trying not to dislodge that mysteriously arousing thumb. "What do _you_ want?" he mumbled.

"'S a secret," pronounced Sparrow after a moment's frowning reflection, swaying forward so that his hair brushed against Jack's throat. "But I promise you," he added earnestly, smoothing his hand down the centre of Jack's sweat-sodden shirt, "I swear I won't do anything to you that I'd mind you doing to me."

Jack laughed out loud at that, and felt the muscles in his stomach tightened under Sparrow's hand. Sparrow scowled down at him, and Jack laughed more.

"Honestly," said Sparrow: and Jack could hardly speak for amusement.

"That all depends," he managed finally, "on what it is you want me to do to _you_."

Sparrow tilted his head in pretended puzzlement. "Who says I want anything, Mr Shaftoe?"

"You planned this," said Jack Shaftoe, hands still for a moment, no trace of laughter in his voice. "You've been waiting for this. You wanted this."

Sparrow's smile was broad and wicked, and Jack's muscles tensed; no matter how agreeable the pirate had been, he'd _tricked_ Jack, and now he was on top of the situation (not to mention, on top of Jack), and Jack like a fool was calling him on it, rather than letting events spin out as they would. He splayed his fingers on Sparrow's muscular thigh, amazed all over again by the sheer novelty of a man's body.

"What if I did?" Sparrow said at last, and the challenge in his voice was matched by -- oh thank Christ -- the heel of his hand, rubbing slowly along the hard ridge of Jack's cock. Jack rolled his hips against that teasing, inadequate pressure, and moaned.

"Don't you want it?" added Jack Sparrow, with superfluous wickedness.

Jack's mouth was open again, but there was certainly no chance of any words emerging now, what with the moaning, and the way that he couldn't get enough air. He felt choked and dizzy and entirely at Sparrow's dubious mercy: and he could do something about one of those, at any rate. Jack pulled Sparrow down against him, rolling so that they lay side by side, and when Sparrow began to pull away he hooked his foot behind the pirate's knee; which had the delightfully unexpected effect of hitching the dress even higher, as well as pulling Sparrow against him so that Shaftoe could grind his aching cock against Sparrow's hip -- an action which did nothing whatsoever to alleviate the ache -- and kiss him again, biting at his lip and making him moan.

* * *

Never mind how much longer this was going to last; with every new notion that visibly struck Shaftoe, Jack Sparrow was further from the moment of retribution, and the probable discomfort of said retribution was much reduced. Instead of being punched, he was being bitten; instead of being flung violently away, he was caught close, almost as close as it was possible for the two of them to get without separating to strip. The little room -- how glad Jack was that he'd paid rent for the whole night! -- was hot and airless, and Jack was keen to tear off the heavy silk; though he'd a notion that Shaftoe would take this as some Point of No Return. Jack's nerves were jangling with the fear of driving Jack Shaftoe away before ... well, _before_. Yet they were also jangling with healthy lust, and with the feeling of Shaftoe's hard cock (hard for _Jack_ , oh joy) pressing against his belly, and Shaftoe's hand wrapping itself slowly and clumsily around Jack's cock. That feeling was so delicious that for a long moment Jack's eyes seemed glued shut, and he could no longer hear the dance music from downstairs, or the senseless battering of moths against the lantern-pane: just the dry heat of Shaftoe's long-awaited hand on him was enough to fill every sense.

When he opened his eyes at last, Shaftoe was staring at him, the blue of his eyes made incredibly vivid by his dilated pupils. Shaftoe had stopped kissing, and he was biting -- for a change -- his own lip.

Must've moaned, thought Jack, and pushed half-helpless into Shaftoe's slackened grip. He needed to get his hands on Shaftoe's skin, soon, sooner: but he couldn't resist another kiss, and that became a drawn-out, languorous affair, with both of them moaning and trying to press closer, despite their clothes.

"I'll need some help," said Jack thickly, drawing away for air at last, "getting out of this dress."

"That's what they all say," said Shaftoe breathlessly, grinning. Oh, the redness of his mouth! Jack wanted it everywhere. He turned his back on Shaftoe, presenting the laces of the ruined dress, and knelt, knees splayed so that his heavy cock hung free.

Shaftoe's gusting breath was like a furnace on the nape of Jack's neck, and he licked and kissed his way down the knobs of his spine until Jack was hissing, spreading his knees even wider in the hope of Shaftoe abandoning the bloody laces and bringing his hands to where they were so desperately needed. It was wonderful that Shaftoe -- clever with knots, it seemed, at least where women's clothing was concerned -- was here, was touching him, was still wanting. But Jack was afire, and that fire was distracting him from the slow, inescapable seduction that he'd dreamt of. Even the silk, sliding over his skin, made his cock twitch against his thigh.

"There," said Shaftoe behind him, "all undone."

"You don't know the half of it," Jack wanted to say. He wrestled the dress and won (albeit with a sound of straining seams), and let it collapse half-on, half-off the mattress as he turned to Shaftoe.

Oh Christ, Jack wanted to spread himself out and be enjoyed: but Shaftoe was looking at him -- at his naked body -- doubtfully, not moving at all; and perhaps it wasn't so surprising, since an hour ago (surely not more?) they'd been drinking downstairs in the tavern, laughing at Bootstrap's bet. Instead of lunging at Shaftoe and bearing him down, then, Jack Sparrow leaned in for another slow kiss. Shaftoe's mouth remembered kissing quickly enough, and Jack almost shouted in exultation when he felt Shaftoe's hand trace a tentative course around his waist, pulling him closer.

Now that one of them was naked, there was no reason for the other not to be: so Jack, supremely proud of this logic and prepared to explain it at considerable length, set his fingers to Shaftoe's shirt buttons, and -- thrilled by the absence of any argument to the contrary --unfastened them one by one, feeling Shaftoe tense under the drag of his fingertips. Once it was done -- undone, thought Jack, smiling against Shaftoe's mouth -- he could slip a hand under the dirty cotton and slide it along Jack Shaftoe's hairy chest. When his fingers brushed the nipple again, Shaftoe moaned, and Jack let himself be pulled closer until he was practically in Shaftoe's lap, and his cock was pushing stickily against Shaftoe's belly.

Jack Shaftoe broke the kiss suddenly, rearing back as though he'd been stung, and Jack, panicking, grabbed at him. But Shaftoe's blue, half-lidded gaze was fixed on him, and he was panting as he tore off the shirt. Then his hands were at the front of his breeches, and Jack's own cock leapt helplessly as Shaftoe pushed the cloth aside and took his own in hand, with a long slow stroke that made Jack writhe and reach for him.

* * *

Jack's Imp was curving and contorting in ecstatic paroxysms, yowling with enjoyment, as Jack Shaftoe knelt there with his cock heavy and hot in his hand, staring at a naked buccaneer who -- it seemed -- had become not only a friend (Jack was amazed enough by this realisation, which had more to do with why he _shouldn't_ be doing this than the fact that he _was_ ) but also, somehow, the focus of a lust which, though lacking in detail, made up for other deficiencies by infusing every atom in his body with desire. A desire which, despite his escapades (or, rather, _escapes_ ) in Port Royal, he had no idea how to fulfil.

He had never really looked at an erect cock before; his own, obviously, did not count, since the perspective was so very different, and brothel etiquette prohibited the inspection of other customers' anatomies, lest curiosity be taken for appreciation. The sight of Jack Sparrow's member, dark with blood, glinting moisture at the smooth-skinned tip, was fascinating: it drew his eye again and again, especially when Sparrow's golden-dark fingers stretched around it, rings glittering; especially when he gave it a couple of rapid half-strokes, groaning, without taking his eyes from Jack's.

Somewhere, very faintly, someone -- Bob, perhaps, it sounded a little like Bob's voice -- was saying something about wrong, foolish, rash and unclean; a bad idea; you'll regret it, Jack, just see if you don't. But Jack regretted little save missed opportunities, and Sparrow -- leaning back against the wall, gazing lecherously at Jack, his delicious smiling mouth open and his hand on his straining cock -- was an Opportunity all the more Unmissable for Jack's only just having noticed him.

Jack struggled out of his breeches as though they were the last barrier between himself and freedom, and reached towards Jack Sparrow; who came to him willingly, pressing his hot smooth skin against Jack's paler own, bending and flexing and curving until the two of them lay side by side again, chest against chest, unhindered by clothing, and Jack could wonderingly trace the line of Sparrow's hip with a hand that hardly trembled. Sparrow's own clever hand, wet with spittle, was on his cock, and, oh hell, Sparrow's cock was sliding against his own as Sparrow's long fingers splayed and stretched around them both. Jack thought he might faint, from lack of air; or spend, from lack of any power to stop himself. His hand ventured around the sweet curve of Sparrow's arse, oh _god_ this was what they'd all wanted from him back in Port Royal and who could blame 'em? Sparrow's tongue pushing triumphantly into his mouth again, Sparrow's cock pulsing against his own shaft, Sparrow's free hand fondly stroking the shivery hollow beneath Jack's ear: and Jack's Imp screeching and bouncing and clamouring greedily for more, much more, right now.

Jack's eyes had drifted closed again, but, as ever, he desired to be honest with himself if no one else: he opened his eyes, pulling back from the kiss to catch his breath, and met Sparrow's dark, lambent stare. Sparrow's eyes were wide, his lips temptingly swollen from kissing -- Jack's mouth was tender, too -- and the muscles in his thigh tensed when he slung his leg over Jack's, forcing their cocks together at a new angle.

Suddenly Jack had a very clear idea of what he wanted next; 'next', rather than 'now', because it was too late now to do anything but groan and drive himself over and over into Sparrow's hand, against Sparrow's hot cock, mashing his mouth against Sparrow's wicked, smiling, irresistible mouth and trying to push Sparrow flat on his back so that he could thrust down against him. But Jack Sparrow was stronger than Jack'd thought, and he resisted, pushed back, hard enough that for a moment Jack was looking up at him: and in that moment Sparrow raised his head; his smiling mouth went slack, and then he was gasping, and coming hotly over Jack's cock and belly, and Jack, identifying the phenomenon, could not help but duplicate it.

Oh Christ, he thought to himself as his blood racketed around his body. Jack Sparrow was shuddering against him, and this (Jack reminded himself, word by word, in the hope of it all making sense somehow) was because they'd kissed, and touched, and made one another spend. Nothing one-sided, nothing uncomfortable, nothing dishonest; nothing Jack Shaftoe had ever thought of wanting, before tonight.

Sparrow's glairy hand smeared across Jack's chest, and he recoiled slightly; then Sparrow was leering victoriously at him, and licking, _licking_ the sticky mess from his fingers.

"That's disgusting," said Jack thickly, without much conviction.

Sparrow leered more, and winked at Jack just as he'd done downstairs in Jack's lap, an aeon ago. His hand was clean now, and he was tonguing the corner of his mouth, and it was more temptation, even now, than Jack Shaftoe could bear.

It was no use reminding himself where that bitter musk had come from. Jack Sparrow's kiss tasted of the sea.


	9. Navigational Errors, ch 9

  
  
Jack Sparrow, gliding indolently against Shaftoe on a slick of their co-produced sweat and semen, found himself questioning (not for the first time, or even the first that evening) the merits of honesty. He'd promised Jack Shaftoe that he wouldn't do anything that he, himself, would mind having done to him. Yet there it was, unlooked-for and not entirely welcome: the urge to leave off what he was doing, if only Jack Shaftoe wished it so. And Jack, who from long experience in other company was quite certain of what he wanted from his companion, most expressly did _not_ want Shaftoe to stop.

Not that he was doing much, by Jack's standards. Shaftoe's right hand was stroking the curve of Jack's arse with a hesitancy that was alarmingly erotic, because it spoke of Jack's being the very first recipient -- assuming that, for tonight at least, women didn't count -- of such attentions from Mr Shaftoe; and Mr Shaftoe's mouth, hotter than anything else in the tropical night, was tasting Jack's skin again, perhaps discovering and savouring the flavour of his own body as it began to blend with the already-tested essence of Jack Sparrow. Nothing much, nothing that would ordinarily have satisfied Jack -- or, rather, _unsatisfied_ him, for the glow of fulfilment was already waning, and that familiar ache of want was making itself known again. And that ache had everything to do with Shaftoe's gaze, hot and blue and wide as a summer's day at sea, roaming curiously over Jack's body like an extra hand; and what made the ache itself so very delightful was the smile that appeared whenever their eyes met.

Perhaps Jack Shaftoe wasn't inclined, at least not yet, to call a halt to the proceedings. Which suited Jack perfectly, because, delicious though the touching and kissing and moaning and tasting had been, he had more in mind. If only, if only Shaftoe could be persuaded to further adventures!

"What're you thinking?" murmured Shaftoe, and Jack realised that his own hand -- tracing his initials, ornately cartouched, on Shaftoe's lean torso; how fortunate that Shaftoe, blissfully ignorant of the written word, wouldn't recognise that invisible brand of ownership! -- had stilled.

He looked up at Jack Shaftoe from under his eyelashes, deliberately provocative, and couldn't help but smile back when Shaftoe's smile broadened. All too bloody easy, Jack couldn't help but think; all too charming and friendly and unexpectedly ... unexpected. Jack Sparrow hadn't won his freedom, the _Black Pearl_ , and a library of treasure-maps by blithely accepting what came easily; but the ease with which Shaftoe had, well, _come_ was so sheerly improbable that he couldn't muster any measure of distrust. Or anything much of anything at all, really, unless it was lust and liking and lascivious intent.

"Wondering what comes next, mate."

"What d'you mean?" said Shaftoe, his mouth so close to Jack's chest that he felt the words as much as heard them.

"Whatever you want me to mean," said Jack, and his eyes widened in horror at giving himself away, giving himself up, so easily: but by sheer good fortune he hadn't spoken aloud (Shaftoe's tongue having caught at his breath, somehow, in a wonderfully timely fashion) and Shaftoe didn't seem to have heard, or to be in any great hurry to hear, his answer.

Jack indulged himself in a long, savouring kiss, stretching out casually until he could feel the welcome press of Shaftoe's resurrecting cock against his hip, before he replied. "Well, mate," he said, running his hand down the meridian-line of reflected light on Jack Shaftoe's chest, "it all depends on whether, so to speak, you reckon you've had your money's worth, or not."

Just for a second, Shaftoe was out of his depth; but he caught on quick enough, Jack'd give him that; he'd give him a lot more, too, if the opportunity presented itself. A flicker of incomprehension, and another of doubt -- Jack was already sliding his hand lower, for heaven forfend Jack Shaftoe should imagine himself unwanted, even for a second -- and then Shaftoe's eyes were narrowing (a transparent signal, to Jack, of duplicity to come) and he was saying, "Worth every penny. But what if -- having spent what coin I had -- I happened to want more?"

Jack wanted to leap up and dance a celebratory jig; but 'twould be ungainly, naked as he was, and besides he preferred to stay in close proximity to Jack Shaftoe's equally naked, sweating, muscular body. Nevertheless he propped himself on one elbow, the better to eye Shaftoe appreciatively -- best term it a leer -- from blue eyes to hardening cock, and said, "Perhaps I'll lend you another half a crown, for you to ... _spend_. But what d'you want it to buy for you?"

Shaftoe's eyes widened, and he grinned; and said, in the tone of one confessing an indulg'd offence, "I've no idea, Captain Sparrow."

* * *

Jack Shaftoe had to keep reminding himself that this was wrong, and bad, and wicked. The latter did not especially disconcert him, since it was unthinkable that he'd escape hellfire for his other misdemeanours; besides, the company in which he'd found himself ablaze was surprisingly entertaining, charming, likeable. Jack would never've thought to find himself on such easy terms with Sparrow; much less would he have imagined finding himself (having lost himself in the moment) naked, on a pestilential straw palliasse, having spent his seed in this man's hand, and watched him spend too, all because of Jack Shaftoe's very presence; and least of all would he have ever dreamt that he might want _more_. Whatever that 'more' might be.

Wrong, and bad, and wicked; but, like every other sin, vice or perversion that Jack Shaftoe had ever met, it felt delightful.

His familiar Imp, languishing in post-climactic bliss beside him -- its skin, at least, not scorchingly hot like his other bedmate's -- had no suggestions to offer upon the matter. Strange, that: it had seemed all in favour of this little excursion into salacity and -- more literally than ever -- Perversion, yet never before had Jack known the Imp to be lost for words.

Though, to be (very quietly) honest, he himself had no very clear idea of what he wanted, or of how to ask for it. It was all very well for Jack Sparrow, knowing full well that Jack was a mere 'prentice at this business (and here Jack's hand swept along the wonderfully gradual curve of Sparrow's waist, as though to remind himself of his partner's masculinity) to invite suggestions. But Jack found himself untongued (in one sense: in another, very definitely tongued, and licked, and tasted) by everything he did not know, and everything he _did_ : by his ignorance of the detailed practice of sodomy, and by Sparrow's implications of equality, viz. that whatever vague phant'sies Jack might wish to practice on Sparrow, he'd find returned upon himself.  
  
"Can it be that you don't know what you want?" said Sparrow, as though reading Jack's thoughts -- an act that Jack himself found challenging at times like this. He was propped on one elbow, looking Jack up and down like a courtier confronted with a side-board of sweetmeats, wondering where to start. "Then perhaps," he continued, sliding down gradually beside Jack until his mouth was right next to Jack's ear, "you find yourself in need of..." Sparrow licked, and Jack quivered. "Guidance," concluded Sparrow, smirking.

"Perhaps," said Jack, aware that he was being teased yet powerless to resist the bait, "I'll simply _improvise_."

Sparrow was wiry, but not as strong as Jack Shaftoe, and Jack had a notion that he enjoyed being bested, even if only in the small circus of their night's bed: at any rate, it was easy to bear Sparrow down on his back, though very hard to let go once he was pinned. Jack gave up on the letting-go part of it, and simply held him down, kissing him almost savagely because he knew that once he stopped kissing, he'd have to speak again. Sparrow writhed against him, and Jack let go of his wrists, trying not to think about what he wanted those freed hands to do.

"So, it's safe to say that you want me, then?" said Jack Sparrow throatily after a while, stilled for a moment.

"Aye," said Jack, acutely aware of Sparrow's hard cock pushing against his own, and wondering whether anything was likely to feel better than spending, again, in Sparrow's hand. (Though: that mouth! Did he? Would he?)

"And I'm a man," said Sparrow, looking Jack right in the eye, as serious as he'd been all evening.

Jack, wondering at the ease of it, reached between their bodies and took Sparrow's hot, sticky cock in his hand (Sparrow groaned, and Jack found that particular piece of cause-and-effect astonishingly exciting) and squeezed. "Aye," he said again.

"Then, Mr Shaftoe," said Sparrow, "all that need concern you is whether you want to _give_ it, or _take_ it."

"And if I give it now, then I take it back later?" parried Jack, licking the hollow beneath Sparrow's ear to see if he could get the groan again.

Sparrow didn't groan, but he curved wonderfully against Jack. "Only if ... when ... you want," he said, in between depositing two or three stinging kisses on Jack's throat.

Jack had had enough prevarication, and besides had proved to himself that he could probably fight off Jack Sparrow, should the pirate captain initiate anything that turned out not to Jack's taste. "I want to give it to you," he said, low and fierce, burying his head in the curve of Sparrow's shoulder and biting hard so as not to see Sparrow's reaction.

But there was no escaping that reaction, for Sparrow was pressing against him, saying, "Oh Christ yes," spreading himself out twistily beneath Jack so that Jack's cock was pushing against Sparrow’s balls; and perhaps it was only Jack's words, or the voice with which he said them, that'd made Jack Sparrow groan again.

* * *

Foolish to think that Shaftoe would up and run any minute soon, yet Jack found himself frantic with haste; not only to have the feel of that strong, lean body up against him, _inside_ him, but to have made Jack Shaftoe somehow his own, to have left an indelible, invisible, inescapable mark on him. Even if Shaftoe, overwhelmed by the newness of it all, fled into the night and was never seen again, Jack would have something of him to hold.

Not that such a flight was in Shaftoe's nature: he was not a coward, and neither he nor Jack were taking anything that hadn't been offered freely. And Shaftoe was lying there on his side, the light catching on ragged scar-edges, and on the blond hair in his armpit, and on a devilish -- nay, an Impish -- gleam in his blue eyes; lying there looking at Jack, and Jack had done nothing yet.

Easily remedied. He rolled onto his stomach (enjoying the pressure of the soiled mattress against his cock) and stretched out one hand to fumble blindly in the heap of discarded clothes by the door. One-handed, because his other hand was catching Jack Shaftoe close; blindly, because his face was turned towards Jack's, seeing nothing but that curiously blurred, dazed expression, and the way that Jack Shaftoe's wet hot red mouth opened to kiss him.

Shaftoe was rolling him over and pressing him down again, flat on his back, settling against him, and Jack loved it; but he twisted away, fingers touching and closing around something hard and cool in the clothes-heap.

"'S to ease the way, mate," he told Shaftoe, struggling to his knees despite a sharp craving for more of the addictive heat of Shaftoe's skin. "Just wait, just wait..."

Shaftoe's eyes were half-closed, and he couldn't seem to stop touching Jack, even once he was stretched on his back, dark cock pressing against his pale belly, with Jack kneeling astride him and moaning as he tried to ready himself -- couldn't help resenting every moment spent on this inelegant but necessary business -- and not simply rock forward into Shaftoe's hard palm, very bold now on Jack's cock.

And then, oh bliss, to sway forward and grab Shaftoe's cock, and bring it to where he most urgently needed it, and _sink_.

Jack groaned, and opened his eyes wide, for he didn't want to miss a single second of Shaftoe's response to this first encounter -- the first, Jack profoundly hoped, of many -- with the furnace of another man's body. And Jack Shaftoe, with his newly-revealed capacity for pleasure, did not disappoint. As Jack's body opened for him (and Jack fought back a cry, for in truth he'd hurried the preparation unforgivably, and his body gave way only slowly to this welcome invasion: but 'twouldn't do to show Shaftoe anything less than the bliss which, honestly, was inextricably twined with the discomfort) Shaftoe's eyes opened wide as Jack's own, and he gasped. Jack could feel the tension in the body beneath him, wanting to thrust and yet, feeling the knot-tight pressure of Jack's arse, waiting to be let in.

Shaftoe's cock -- which Jack intended to pay a great deal of close attention to, whenever next he was given the opportunity -- was broad, and he could feel the ridge of the head as it pressed slowly inwards. When he leaned back, the angle became more acute, and Shaftoe blasphemed and set his wide, strong hands on Jack's hips, and _pulled_.

The bolt of lightning that shot through Jack's body might have melted every bone in its way; he groaned again, low and loud and quite unable to stop himself, and slumped forward. Shaftoe took one hand from Jack's hip to steady him, and bucked up against him, and Jack found himself hanging over Shaftoe, almost kissing-close -- too close to resist, really, so he pushed his knees forward (Shaftoe made a noise like a wild beast) and let himself fall against Shaftoe's mouth.

Shaftoe, it turned out, was too busy making beast-noises to kiss, or to speak; his hands were tight on Jack's hips and he was thrusting hard and fast, trying to pull Jack further onto himself, trying to push deeper. Jack's head was swimming; there were stars all around him, and a blazing Comet driving inside him, over and over, and fireworks in his blood.

And if Shaftoe had only ever had women -- no matter how bold and brazen they'd been -- then there was something that Jack needed to tell him. Something most urgently affecting the two of them, here, now, with not a moment to be lost.

"Don't hold back, mate," he said, or tried to say. Difficult to talk with Jack Shaftoe giving it to him like this; but he could feel Shaftoe restraining himself, gentling his thrusts, and Jack Sparrow would have none of it. "I can take whatever you can give me," he told Shaftoe; then cried out as Shaftoe lifted him half-off his cock, held him, and commenced a succession of hard, tantalisingly shallow thrusts that drove Jack beyond words.

* * *

The feeling of Jack Sparrow's body, awesomely hot and tight around his cock, tightening yet more as Jack thrust up into him, was terrifying. Jack was not much given to fear, and he'd a sense of honour that -- however many other agreements he might renege on -- would not leave any matter unsettled between Sparrow and himself. But he had not expected the abandon on Jack Sparrow's face, the way his cock leapt as Jack thrust into him; the way that Jack's own arsehole spasmed sympathetically at the sight of his cock disappearing into Sparrow's body; or, most distressingly, the fatal curiosity which had ambushed him at the sight, and sound, of Sparrow's ecstasy. So easy, now, to invoke that low groan, or _that_ breathy cry, or -- Jack brought his knees up, and pushed Sparrow back, altering the angle at which his cock penetrated the pirate's slick, clenching arse -- that irresistible writhe, which threatened again to wring his climax from him before he'd brought Sparrow off. But there were two things that Jack particularly wanted, albeit not at the same time (for were they simultaneous he thought that he might die): he wanted to watch Sparrow come, with Jack's cock as deep inside him as he could drive it; and, more disturbingly, he wanted to feel what Sparrow was feeling, wanted to feel a man's cock -- this man's cock -- inside his own tightening arse, wanted...

It was nothing like being with a girl. _Nothing_. No girl he'd ever had (though Jack had to acknowledge that the girls of his intimate acquaintance had been, for the most part, harlots and actresses and the like, and thus not necessarily a representative sample of the female species) had been this narrow, or this full of heat, or so lithely muscled everywhere around him. And Sparrow had not lied when he promised to take whatever Jack gave him: he was spread above Jack, one hand on his dark, bursting-tight cock, stroking himself in time with Jack's thrusts; he was panting, moaning, his tongue -- very pink -- snaking out to lap at the sweat on his upper lip, which Jack wanted to lick but couldn't reach; and oh, oh, he was looking straight at Jack Shaftoe, and for this one moment everything Jack Sparrow felt was there in his eyes, in his face, in every line and motion of his body as he rocked above Jack Shaftoe, who could hardly breathe for watching him.

Jack's stomach muscles were screaming, but he paid them no mind and twisted himself up, pulling Sparrow's hips forward; couldn't quite reach for a kiss, so he blew, short and sharp, on the gleaming skin above Sparrow's heart, and felt the quiver of Sparrow's response in every place where their bodies touched.

"Who did this last?" demanded Jack, pausing at the vividness of the image that had appeared in his head. Sparrow looked dazed; but not dazed enough for any pretence of incomprehension, for Jack saw his eyes narrow, and felt Sparrow's hand brush against his own.

Sparrow shook his head, and looked down; and up at Jack again, abruptly, as Jack held still.

"'Twas Barbossa, then," said Jack Shaftoe, watching Sparrow.

Sparrow met his gaze, all the delight gone, and said scratchily, "Aye."

Jack, who'd seen demons exorcised from people -- some of them even living to tell of it, over and over, at the church gate -- wanted now to drive every last memory of Barbossa, and any who'd been here before him, from Sparrow's body; more, wanted to replace every sober wistful memory with a moment of sheer delight. (Wanted, too, to assuage the ache that banded his stomach from the unusual exertions of this particular vice.) He pulled his cock free -- registering a moment of triumph at the growl of complaint -- and hauled Sparrow down onto him, and for a moment wondered how this might work; but then Sparrow, after a fierce, hot kiss, was sprawling next to him on the mattress, pulling at him, guiding him back in; and like this, with Sparrow's ever so flexible leg hooked around him, Sparrow's heel in the hollow of his waist, Sparrow open and stretching and writhing against him as he thrust in, it was at once more and less like anything ever before.

Jack's hand was on Sparrow's cock, and they were kissing, and he was trying to talk through the kiss, telling Sparrow that he was driving out every atom of Barbossa; but mainly he was fucking Jack Sparrow hard and deep and steady, and Sparrow was taking it all, head lolling back to expose that kissable throat, mouth wide in a grin that threatened to split his entire skull, and his cock was pulsing in Jack's tightening grip, gouting wet heat over his hand and up across his belly.

"Oh, Christ, Jack!" said Jack Shaftoe, breathless and amazed and terrified with desire: and "Jack," said Sparrow, slowly, slowly, drawing out his -- their -- name until it was a groan. He looked like a painting of some martyred saint, all contorted face and gilded skin. Jack spared a moment, a very brief moment, to wonder how he looked himself, caught in this utterly unimagined rush of sensations; but he hardly cared, for everything in the world was pouring out of him into the dark hot heart of Jack Sparrow's body.

* * *

Afterwards, the two of them lay close, curved together in the darkness; it was too hot to lie in one another's arms, yet Sparrow's finger traced Shaftoe's sharp-toothed grin, and Shaftoe's foot arched over the swell of Sparrow's calf.

"What now? What next?" said one.

The other, leaning in to thieve an unsignalled kiss, said, "Why, Jack, the rest of our time together."

Outside, the night grew quiet.


	10. Navigational Errors, chapter 10

  
  
Jack Sparrow came awake instantly and quietly, as the swift tropical dawn began to light the little room above the inn. He stretched, and mouthed a curse as the muscles in his thighs, stomach and arse protested; then smirked as the sense-memory of those aches' acquisition played out behind his eyelids.

Jack Shaftoe, blue eyes wide with amazement as he spent himself within another man's body for the first time; how wonderful, how serendipitous, that the body in question had been Jack's. Shaftoe's voice murmuring his name -- not 'Captain Sparrow', by that time, but 'Jack', which Jack Sparrow found a strangely delightful echo of his own implorations. Shaftoe curling warm beside him, just touching, as they fell asleep together.

Jack reached out blindly for Shaftoe. It was not a big mattress; there'd been scarcely space for the two of them, never mind much of a gap through which a breath of air might fit, but Jack was used to life afloat and seldom missed the luxury of space. He did miss Shaftoe, now, though, for Jack himself was in the centre of the straw pallet, and he discovered himself alone.

Jack's eyes opened, and he glanced around wildly. Shaftoe was nowhere to be seen; but his white shirt, rather stained, lay on the rough boards next to the bed. Jack Sparrow relaxed. Shaftoe'd got up to piss, or (Jack thought longingly) to fetch some breakfast for them both: he'd not be long. Jack stretched out again, naked on the coarse filthy mattress-ticking, and folded his arms behind his head. Shaftoe had been so sensual, so ready for it, so open and honest in thought and feeling and response. He'd put all his warmth and playfulness into what they'd done here last night -- which Jack hesitated to call lovemaking, for that was what women and courtiers did, but recognised already as more than mere _fucking_ \-- and he'd fallen asleep beside Jack with a smile on his face, as though he could hardly wait to wake up and do it all again. Jack wished Shaftoe had woken _him_ before he went out; just thinking of last night was making him crave the heat of Shaftoe's big, effective hands.

Though Jack Shaftoe had been gone a long time, for someone going outside to piss, or to get a jug of water ... Maybe Jack'd mixed it all up in his mind, and Shaftoe had departed in haste, fleeing the undeniable Acts which he'd committed with Jack Sparrow's enthusiastic encouragement. Maybe, after all, his avowed disinterest in sodomy had reawakened, livelier than ever now that it'd fed upon first-hand experience, and he'd scarpered before Jack should awake and claim his share.

Which was hardly fair, thought Jack Sparrow resentfully, for he'd promised to do nothing that Shaftoe did not want; he'd even, unbelievably, offered to stop doing _anything_ , if only Shaftoe wished it so. Shaftoe, luckily, had not; he'd taken -- nay, _welcomed_ \-- everything Jack had given him, and Jack could not believe that he'd want nothing more of it.

And even if one night had been enough -- Jack's eyebrows drew together at the thought -- then surely they were, if not (yet) fast friends, on amiable enough a footing for Shaftoe to wake up beside him, and turn to him, and say to his face, "No more: 'tis not for me."

Though Jack would take that as a challenge: an invitation to bend every art, and every _part_ , at his disposal to the task of seducing Jack Shaftoe all over again. Perhaps -- since the thought was so pleasant -- he’d do it anyway, once Shaftoe came back from his wanderings.

... He'd left without his shirt. That was an image distracting enough to divert Jack, once more, from wondering where Shaftoe might have got to now. And it was hardly as though Jack Shaftoe were some innocent mooncalf, newly arrived from an unheard-of country backwater and gawping wide-eyed at everything. Shaftoe could look after himself well enough -- possibly better, on land, than Jack himself, which was a sobering thought; but he'd been sneaking and thieving in London Town, and in all the fabled cities of Europe, while Jack'd sailed the seas, learning the form and function and proper name of every rope, sail, and piece of wood that made up a ship -- and he was unlikely to take kindly to Jack fussing over him. He'd be back. And when he came back, perhaps he'd be so kind as to take care of this rather pressing problem that Jack suddenly found besetting him; to wit, the physiological consequence of thinking of Jack Shaftoe in any way at all.

Jack drifted off into an Aphrodisian dream of Jack Shaftoe's return, all eager hands and hot mouth and slow teasing; Shaftoe whispering questions and commands in his ear -- "What shall I do?" and "Show me" and "Oh please now" -- and growing more confident, more devastatingly assured, as his hands and mouth charted Jack's eager, imperfect body. Jack's hand was on his own cock, to help the dream along, but what made him spend was not his final swift stroke, but the recollection, sharper than a knife, of Shaftoe above him, saying his name as though he'd just discovered a whole new language.

Came a banging on the ill-hung wooden door, threatening to fold it inwards under the weight of the hammering fist. Shaftoe? But why would he knock?

Jack fell out of bed anyway -- an achievement, of sorts, when one's mattress is on the bare floorboards, but Jack was used to rolling out of his bunk -- and dragged on his breeches. Last night's ambery silk dress sprawled like a corpse at the foot of the bed. The room stank of sweat and semen, and Jack inhaled deeply, savouring their commingled smells.

"Who's there?" he called.

"Just the boy, sir," said a voice. "Are you Captain Sparrow?"

"What if I am?" said Jack craftily.

"There's a gentleman below, asking for a Captain Sparrow," said the boy from the other side of the door; and added, helpfully, "Not a Navy gent, or nothin'."

Jack had used his shirt -- a good one, too -- to wipe clean his belly a few moments ago. He picked up Jack Shaftoe's shirt instead. It smelt of its owner.

"What's this gentleman like?"

"He's a sailor," said the boy impatiently. "With an earring. Are ye coming down?"

"Aye," said Jack, buttoning the few surviving shirt-buttons and considering the rest of the garment-heap. Jack Shaftoe had no earring, yet; Jack'd been saving that suggestion, for when (if) they crossed the Line together. He pocketed the little jar of fragrant grease, and retrieved his sword and pistol, and his coat. The maid could have the dress; it'd served its turn, and though Jack knew himself pretty enough in it, he'd no need to dress as a woman on any regular basis. Besides, it wanted mending, after Jack Shaftoe's warm response to Jack's little game.

He flung open the door, almost wrenching it from its hinges, and struck a piratical pose; but the lounging youth did not seem impressed.

Below, in the common-room of the inn, sat Bootstrap Bill Turner, obligingly lifting his feet as a sullen maid swept last night's chicken-bones, ballad-sheets, nutshells and broken pottery from the floor. In the corner, another girl scrubbed at some more persistent stain. The boy was lingering hopefully, and Jack rummaged in his pockets, but he'd not a penny.

"Mr Turner, what's to do? And would you have a coin for the lad?"

Bill flipped a copper penny to the boy, who caught it neatly and hurried off. "On your own, Captain?"

Jack Sparrow scowled at his First Mate. "Mr Shaftoe's stepped out."

He could feel Bill's eyes on him, noting (with the familiarity of long practice) the shirt that wasn't his own, and the way that it didn't cover the red necklace of bites with which Jack Shaftoe had claimed him; noting, too, his still-swollen mouth and heavy lids, the smeared kohl; and not least his ferocious glower, from which Bill, no doubt, was drawing all sorts of conclusions. Jack scowled more fiercely.

"Must be something of great import, for you to seek me out," he said, taking the stool across from Bill's. There was, for a wonder, a pot of coffee (a delicious English vice), and Jack helped himself to a cup of it. It tasted of acorns, and burned his tongue.

"The _Orion_ 's dropped anchor in the outer harbour," said Bill without preamble. "No word yet of her new captain; but the lads are uneasy, sharing a berth with His Majesty's boys."

"Indeed," said Jack. No Navy ship would attack the infamous _Black Pearl_ at her mooring. True, she might be masquerading as the _Dark Lady_ , but the _Pearl_ and the _Orion_ had encountered one another before: there'd be hands who, never mind the paint and the beads (Jack grinned at the thought of his own delightfully effective disguise) would recall her uniquely lovely lines, and put her true name to her. Stabroek was, to all intents and purposes, a neutral harbour; but an ambitious captain -- or one who felt he deserved some _doucement_ for leaving a notorious pirate vessel in peace -- might make life very hard for her crew. Best that the _Black Pearl_ slipped away before the _Orion_ had filled her water-casks and replenished her supplies.

Jack sipped his harsh black coffee and considered his options. To linger in Stabroek meant handing his beloved _Pearl_ , on a plate, to some bewigged Naval twit; not to mention the _Black Pearl_ 's company, who'd be pressed into the Service if able to lie convincingly, or hanged by the neck until dead if devoid of natural wit.

"Most of the men are back on board," said Bill Turner. "Not wanting to run into any Navy types looking for a party."

"Aye," said Jack slowly. Well, there was nothing for it; they'd have to run. He drained his cup, spat the dregs back in (he'd forgotten about those) and stood up. "A minute, mate."

The lass with the broom gave him an unwarranted look, and clutched her weapon more tightly. Jack Sparrow kept a civil distance.

"Now, love, there's a silk dress in it for you, so think carefully, savvy?"

The girl nodded, and screwed up her face in an expression doubtless intended to convey cogitation. Jack sighed.

"There was a gentleman staying here last night, up in your top room. Aye, along with myself. Now he's gone off for his constitutional, and left no direction. Yellow hair, he had, and blue eyes. Nice-looking fellow; I'm sure you'd've marked him. Probably," and here Jack could not help but swallow, "he went out without his shirt on."

He was watching the maid carefully, but there was no flicker of intelligence in her sallow face.

"I ain't seen him, sir. But maybe Jim, in the stables, he might've seen your friend."

Jack swore; the maid looked shocked.

"Well, love, you go and sweep that top room, and you keep what you might find there," Jack said. "And if that gentleman comes back..." Bloody Shaftoe couldn't read, now, could he? No use in leaving him a note. "Tell him the _Pearl_ sails on the noon tide."

"The _Pearl_ sails on the noon tide," repeated the maid, without curiosity.

"Now tell me where I'll find Jim," directed Jack, "and then go upstairs and sweep that room 'fore anyone else does, savvy?"

He followed her directions to the stable; but Jim (a vacant-eyed young man, though impressively muscled) had seen nothing, no one, and certainly no yellow-haired gent of that description. Without his shirt!

Jack Sparrow was sick of being distracted by the notion of the shirtless Jack Shaftoe wandering the dusty streets of the town under the tropical sun. Shaftoe was probably sitting in some shady arbour, swigging watered wine. (Jack glossed over the memory of Jack Shaftoe spending his last shilling on rum; he'd all his fingers, still, and the Bank of Other Men's Pockets was always open.) Jack Shaftoe was probably, even now, drinking a toast to whatever gods had preserved him from Jack Sparrow's embrace.

But the unique, evocative odour of Jack Shaftoe's body wrapped him as surely as Shaftoe's threadbare linen shirt. The shirt was slightly too large for Jack, and it billowed in the still air as he moved; and every movement brought the scent afresh, and made his blood burn and surge.

Jack cursed, and kicked the stable door as he passed. Bill was waiting, not really very patiently, in the common-room, and the girl with the broom was nowhere to be seen.

"Come on, Mr Turner," said Jack, pushing open the inn's front door with more than necessary force. "Time to go aboard. Unless you've other business here?"

Bootstrap Bill took one look at his captain's stormy expression, and visibly bit back whatever he'd been about to say. He stayed at Jack’s heel as the two of them made their way through the town; and if he noted the way that Jack’s footsteps slowed as he stared into the gloom of each alleyway, he did not mention it.

"There's another thing, Captain," he said at last, beckoning to a waterman, when they stood on the quayside. "Joe was in the Anchor last night."

"I'm happy for him," said Jack Sparrow, scanning the masts in the harbour. There was his lovely _Pearl_ , still tricked out as the _Dark Lady_ with crimson trim and a whorish look to her figurehead, but every spar and stay of her proclaiming her nobility; and there, in the outer harbour beyond the breakwater (the threatened storm having failed to appear) was the old _Orion_ , King's flag at her mast, aswarm with Navy blokes. Too close for comfort, by far.  
  
"That inn over to our right, on the waterfront," said Bill doggedly. "He reckons he saw Ragetti in there."

"Ragetti that was Barbossa's man?" Jack fixed his First Mate with a hard stare. "We let him off down the coast, did we not? A good three days' sail from here?"

"Aye," said Bill, stepping down into the boat. "But that was more than three days ago."

"Is Joe sure of it? Sure it was him?"

"Not positively sure," said Bill. "Once Ragetti -- or some other tow-haired, one-eyed fellow, as it may be -- caught sight of our Joe watching him, he took himself off to some other joint."

"Ragetti can't do much on his own," mused Jack. "And his mate's a long way from here yet." Pintel had been one of the men he'd wanted off the _Black Pearl_ as soon as possible; he'd walked the plank (complaining vociferously, all the while, of his rights) and shared Barbossa's midnight swim to that sandbar in the middle of nowhere. "Though I don't like the notion of him telling tales about the inequities of Captain Jack Sparrow."

"Perhaps," said Bill, looking fixedly at the disguised _Black Pearl_ as the waterman's steady strokes brought them closer to the ship, "Mr Shaftoe ran afoul of 'im."

"Aye," said Jack Sparrow darkly. "Well, Mr Shaftoe can take care of himself, I reckon."

"Will you leave him here?" Bill said. "Sail off without him? After --"

'After', indeed.

"If Mr Shaftoe can't get his arse back to his ship before she sails, then he's no sailor," said Jack Sparrow. "And he may do as he pleases, since he's so set on it."

The little boat had reached the _Black Pearl_ , and Jack nodded at Bill to pay the boatman. As he stretched up his hand to catch the rope, the smell of Jack Shaftoe's sweat wafted richly from the armpit of the shirt. Setting his foot on the first notched step in _Pearl_ 's black hull produced a more immediate discomfort, and the sharp memory of the pleasure that'd brought him to this pain. Jack closed his eyes for a moment: but only a moment, for Jack Shaftoe was gone.


	11. Navigational Errors, Chapter 11

  
  
The heavy clang of the iron-bound door did not just secure the brig, with Jack Shaftoe, as a matter of course, on the _inside_ of it. It also rang with the sound of a circle, a shackle, closing; for was this not -- poetically considered -- where the whole merry rondo had begun?

Jack Shaftoe was fond of entertaining himself, and anyone ignorant enough to remain within earshot, by pondering the turning-points in his life to date; the choices he'd made (or, on more than one occasion, _failed_ to make), the whims he'd pursued, and those underhand, seemingly random blows of malicious Lady Fortuna that had set him, like a stray cannon-ball, on a fresh course each time. He'd known men like himself who'd sprung from humble beginnings and found (and sometimes even held onto) fame and glory and fortune. And then there was Bob. Oh, Bob, so similar to Jack in some ways, and yet so ... well, so _dull_ , to be perfectly honest. Their origins were identical (barring that matter of their unknown fathers, who might or might not be a single one of Mother Shaftoe's many business acquaintances); they'd looked out for one another through the difficult years of childhood, and thus circumstance and Fate had perforce played them the same hand; and yet the two of them were set on paths which seemed likely to diverge still further. Brother Bob, Jack felt sure, was doing the Right Thing even now, somewhere back in Europe; and to prove it, _he_ wasn't sprawled on the damp malodorous floor of a ship's brig, trying to work out which parts of his anatomy were most likely to bear his weight if he were to attempt sitting.

Jack Shaftoe, of course, knew exactly what had made his life a haphazard reel, as compared to Bob's steady, unsurprising progression. 'Twas the Imp of the Perverse, the invisible ally that sat upon his shoulder and whispered delicious temptations into his ear. Though Jack was not, now, quite sure whether this particular situation was the result of the Imp's presence, or its absence. He'd told Jack Sparrow all about the Imp, he remembered that very clearly; that warm night in the yellow moonlight, with a bottle of rum emptying itself into both of them, and Jack all drunken and happy, pleased to be with someone who not only did not mock him, but seemed to hang admiringly (or, it might be, drunkenly) 'pon his every word. Sparrow had leaned close, and Jack had smelt the rum on his breath, and had wanted -- of course he had not mentioned this at the time -- to _taste_ it there too, to see if it was different from the stuff in the bottle.

Jack groaned out loud at the memory, the bright clear warmth of it: and there was a sudden heavy thump above his head, and someone up there yelling, "Stop yer griping!"

Better not to think about Jack Sparrow; so, with some difficulty (and further oaths and imprecations from his unseen critics on deck) Jack got himself propped against the wall. At least they hadn't flogged him, yet; he could lean, and lie down, and though his ribs ached, nothing else felt broken.

And he'd scrag that little shit Porter if it was the last thing he did. Which at this rate might very well be the case.

Jack concentrated for a few moments on straightening and crooking his arm, the pain being a wonderful focussing mechanism when one's thoughts ran off upon an unnecessarily negative course.

Now, then: he'd told Jack Sparrow of the Imp, and Sparrow had laughed at him. With him.

"A short life and a merry one," he'd said, and Jack'd raised his rum in a toast; and oh, how he'd longed to embrace Jack Sparrow just for the sheer joy of finding a kindred spirit. But then, that night he'd still been wary of Sparrow's tenebrous gaze upon him, and Sparrow's wicked smile; of the way that Sparrow's sinuous progress along the long deck of the _Black Pearl_ had brought to mind various lewd phant'sies; and of the inevitable revenge that Sparrow, torn from the masthead one bright blue afternoon by Jack's own hand, must be planning.

He was not thinking about that revenge. Very definitely not thinking about it.

Perhaps the Imp had taken itself off to Sparrow's shoulder -- always assuming there had been room for it there, amidst the jangling trinkets and the earrings -- and was even now crooning happily into its new host's ear, both of them blithely unaware of Jack Shaftoe's fall from grace.

Or was it the Imp who'd steered him astray, in the dark before dawn? It was a mistake that any man could make, in the dark stable-yard of an unknown inn: turning right instead of left, and knowing himself awry only when a heavy hand fell upon his shoulder and a phlegmy English voice suggested -- in a tone that did not offer choices, much less discussion -- a life on the ocean wave.

Left to his own devices (as was usually the case) Jack Shaftoe might have fought, or bribed, his way free of the press sergeant's grip. But then, like a green boy -- like a bloody idiot, in fact -- he'd heard a familiar voice, and had thought to call on his old mate Dick Porter for help.

"Ho, Dick!" he'd cried. "Won't you explain to this gentleman that I'd rather not accept his generous offer?" Or something like that, anyway, for the sergeant had held him most cruelly tight, the bare skin of his torso still tingling with Not Thinking About It, and his appeal might've been punctuated with gasps and oaths.

"Aye, sergeant, he's a game one," Dick Porter -- fickle, treacherous, _disgusting_ Dick Porter -- had said cheerfully, making no move at all to help an old friend. "Shaftoe's 'is name. We was on the _Henrietta Marie_ together --"

Jack had frozen, revolted less by Porter's wide, blackened grin than by the new garb he'd acquired. Sailor's togs. _Navy_ togs. And Porter -- what had Jack Shaftoe ever done to him? -- was about to damn Jack utterly.

"-- but he ran off with the pirates who attacked us and left us to die."

"Us?" Jack wanted to yell. "What 'us'? You were there 'cause you wanted to get home, same as me, and we were working our passage, but only 'cause we couldn't help it, and if there was an 'us' it was our little gang, not you and that dull mob of halfwits..."

He couldn't speak, though, for the sergeant of the press-gang -- a red-faced man who stank of stale beer -- had him in a headlock, and breathing was quite enough, for now.

"You filthy beast," the sergeant had opined; and Jack, despite everything, had begun to laugh; for they didn't know the half of it.

The half that they did know, it turned out, was quite enough to leave Jack curled on his side, coughing red (though not very red), all thought and memory of Jack Sparrow driven from him by the press sergeant's meaty, gristly fist and the various kicks and blows with which his gang -- scabrous, nauseating Porter and his new mates -- made clear their opinion of piracy in general, and Jack Shaftoe in particular.

He'd woken up on board this vessel, whatever her name was, and found himself instantly appreciating Tom Flinch's travails afloat. They were still at anchor (though Jack did not pause to note this in his headlong lunge for the scuppers) but there was a greasy, heavy swell from the north-west, and the ship bucked and corkscrewed like a colicky horse. Jack had heaved forth dinner and rum and most of his internal organs, or so he imagined, wracked by spasms from within that made an artistic complement to the dull ache of bruises and cracked ribs, and longed for the smooth predatory grace of the _Black Pearl_.

Only once he'd finished, and was lying there, just breathing, did he feel something sharp-edged in his clenched fist; and, upon unfolding his swollen fingers carefully, found that some bastard had forced a shilling into his hand.

Then a Navy type had tipped a bucket of seawater over him, and indicated, with the knotted end of a rope, that he'd better get himself on his feet.

"No time to laze in the sun, man!" It was dawn. "This is the King's Navy!"

The horror was too great, and Jack could not help himself: he howled, and lashed out, and protested vociferously, some of it in mangled legal zargon: "habeas corpus!" and "droit de seigneur!" and the like. But no one who was listening spoke Latin, or French, or whatever tongue it was that lawyers used, or perhaps they simply did not care: for his throat was raw and his bruises multiplied by the time he'd been delivered, dazed and weak, to the brig.

"Never thought to see you turning buccaneer, Shaftoe," said a voice now, out of the gloom. "Found a taste for it, did you?"

"Dick? That you?" mumbled Jack Shaftoe, and reached up to feel his cracked mouth.

"Aye, Jack, it's me." There was enough light filtering down from the deck for Jack to make out the indistinct form of his old friend. "Never thought we'd be reunited so soon. "

"What happened to you?" said Jack, reserving insult in case Dick Porter'd had a change of heart, now he was out of that sergeant's sight, and might actually be of some use to him.

"When you left us all to sink, you mean?" said Dick sharply.

"You could've come with me!"

"I'd no wish to find myself at the end of a rope," said Dick. "Though I won't deny there were a couple of days, after the water ran low, when I wondered if I'd made the right choice. But then the _Orion_ sighted us, and took us off the sugar-ship, and brought us safe to land."

The reverence with which Dick said 'land' was not lost on Jack Shaftoe.

"Surprised you didn't stay put, mate," he said. "The sea's all right for fishes and mermaids, but --"

"Didn't have no choice, did we?" said Dick. "It was all, 'Come along and enter as Able Seaman, or clap on tight to a spar and hope you come ashore some day.'"

"Don't blame you, then," said Jack. "But why not run?"

"They feed you," said Dick. "Every day. And there's less o' that buggering business, like the buccaneers -- buggerneers, ha ha -- get up to. Course, Jack, _you'd_ know all about that, wouldn't you?"

Not Thinking About It was becoming increasingly difficult, and the next challenge turned out to be Not Blushing Like a Maid when he did: but the brig was dark, and anyway the bruising would hide it. "What the fuck are you on about, mate?" said Jack, trying to sound amused.

"Wandering around half-naked in the middle of the night?" said Dick. "Inn full of pirates, too: that's why we didn't come in till your lot'd all gone off or passed out. Y'know, I saw that pirate hulk -- the one that attacked us, _you_ remember -- tied up at the quay as we come by. Thought she looked familiar, but couldn't put a name to 'er, and no one took any notice of ol' Dick."

"You astound me," said Jack, but luckily it did not come out very clearly, and anyway Dick was carrying on regardless.

"Anyway, when we got to the Anchor there you all were, and they 'ad to admit I'd been right. And then there was you, all on yer own, living proof! The _Black Lady_ , weren't it? Black something, anyway. Reckon you found yourself a nice cushy berth on 'er, mate. And it don't hurt much once you get used to it, does it now?"

Oh heaven, oh hell, what he'd done to Jack Sparrow. Jack couldn't remember any pain, but now he'd given up on Not Thinking About It, he could not stop thinking of the ecstasy on Sparrow's face as Jack had held him tight and thrust hard, as deep as he could go, and Sparrow's body had been impossibly tight around him, and Sparrow had been breathless with joy, urging him on: and Jack had wanted the same thing, wanted to feel -- wanted _Sparrow_ to make him feel -- the same way. Jack shut his eyes tight, but the image glowed ever brighter.

He'd thought the ache of the beating had begun to fade, but this sharp new pang -- and the corresponding pain that the memory provoked in his swelling prick, where he hadn't quite dodged a knee -- was worse than all the rest combined, for it was not wholly physical in nature.

"Dunno what you're on about, Dick Porter," he said, without much conviction. (Could Dick _smell_ it on him? Smell Jack Sparrow? Jack blushed again, in the merciful dark.) "So you've taken the King's shilling and gone over to the other side, then? Pressing any fellow who happens to be on his own, never mind if he's just stepped out to the stables to have a piss?"

"Should've looked where you was going, mate," said Dick cheerfully. "Anyway, it's not all bad. They don't use the cat much, on the _Orion_ , an' they won't give you more than a few strokes, being as you're new to it all."

"What? You mean you ain't you going to help me out of here?" cried Jack, aghast at this treachery. "But I thought --"

"Sorry, mate," said Dick insincerely. "Anyway, no point to it: yer mates've gone. Sailed on the noon tide, they did, in a bit of a hurry if you ask me ...Look, I brought you this."

"How can I bloody look, you idiot, it's dark as a Neeger's --"

There was a pottery clang against the bars, and Jack, groaning from more than just simple pain, reached towards the sound. His fingers touched the curve of a jug, and he pulled it towards himself. There was water, and he took several greedy gulps before wondering how long the rest of it might have to last him.

"Thanks, mate," he said warmly. "Now, won't you tell me --"

"Porter!" called a voice from somewhere above, and Dick said urgently, "I have to go. If they catch me --"

"Porter, get your lazy bum to the foremast! Last man down gets the rope!"

"Later," muttered Dick nervously, and Jack heard him stumbling in the darkness as he took himself off.

Well.

Jack thought longingly of the departed _Black Pearl_ , her sweet-oil smell, her delightful lines, her speed: her captain. Oh hell. Not Thinking About It was doomed to failure, it seemed. Here he was, beaten and imprisoned and doomed to wait until they took him out and flogged him for some imagined offence; Resisting an Officer, it might be, or Consorting with Pirates. Jack Shaftoe had been flogged before (though never on a Navy ship, by a Navy bosun, before a Navy crew), and thus the actual event held no terrors for him. The simple fact of his captive state, as symbolised by that imminent punishment, was more distressing. Jack Shaftoe, cunning Jack, captured by a press gang! Like any man who had occasion to walk alone in a port city, he had learned to evade the press, and had boasted of it; but then, there was a first time for everything. And last night had been proliferant with new experiences, from the moment he'd clambered out of the gig, to the moment he'd recognised Jack Sparrow in his whore's garb, to the moment when he'd kissed him again anyway, to the moment...

Jack's cock hurt with the combined throb of having Resisted an Officer and, priorly, Consorted with Pirates. Pirate. The Consorting had been ever so much more enjoyable, and Jack dearly longed for the opportunity to do it again.

Which meant that he must free himself from this dark, noisome brig; somehow escape the floating prison of the _Orion_ \-- which at best promised, post-flogging, to be as dull as the _Henrietta Marie_ , with the added aggravations of Dick Porter's _presence_ , and Jack Sparrow's _absence_ \-- and somehow find his way to some favoured landfall of the _Black Pearl_. Jack Sparrow had said he liked Stabroek, but surely they'd not be back this way for a while: and how could Jack seek out a notorious pirate vessel captained by a man renowned for his unpredictability?

Just for a moment, Jack allowed himself to contemplate a future in which he never met Sparrow again. A future in which he made his way back to London somehow; then ... what? Where? The wars in Europe? Further afield, to the barren wastes and numberless riches of Hindoostan? The prospect was enough to drive him mad with boredom -- always assuming the Pox held off for long enough.

He tried to imagine Jack Sparrow's reaction, waking and finding him gone. Had Sparrow searched for him in the narrow lanes of the town? Had he hesitated before he gave the order to weigh anchor, hoping that Jack Shaftoe would find his way back in time to sail with the _Black Pearl_ again? Or did he think that Jack had run away rather than face him in the morning?

There was, Jack Shaftoe concluded, no reason for him to think otherwise: and was appalled at the sharp pain -- seemingly not rooted in any single part of his body, but in his _mind_ \-- which this thought provoked. Oh heaven, oh hell; to have had half of what he wanted, and to be torn away before Jack Sparrow could turn the tables and give him back what he'd given, all hard and fierce and joyous, to the pirate captain.

Jack Shaftoe groaned, and propped his head on his knees (every part of him hurt, however he arranged himself) and shivered a little in the cold dark brig. Full circle, he thought: if only he could wake and find himself in the brig of the _Henrietta Marie_ once more, with the _Black Pearl_ 's cannons roaring beyond the hull and it all to do again. If only he could lean in, under that yellow moon, and taste Jack Sparrow's mouth as the rum, the Imp, his own curious nature had bidden him! Maybe then they'd have slept last night curled together in Sparrow's bunk, rather than at the inn, and Jack would never have been taken by the press gang. Perhaps -- and here his whole body jolted -- it would've been Sparrow's turn, and Jack would have been taken in quite another fashion.

Jack Shaftoe, immersed in might-have-beens, groaned louder than before, and did not care who bellowed a complaint.


	12. Navigational Errors, ch 12

  
  
The _Dark Lady_ \-- for the _Pearl_ still wore her tawdry disguise -- warped out from the inner harbour of Stabroek at the height of the noonday tide. The crew, sweating and cursing and pale yellow, beneath their tans, with the aftermath of a short night's leave, had brought aboard water, and fresh fruit, and bread and salt fish; but she was not provisioned for more than a few days. More than one man glared up at the captain, brooding aloft in the foretop like some especially ill-tempered vulture. His precious telescope was firmly trained upon His Majesty's Ship _Orion_ as she lay at anchor, taking on supplies. Joe Turk was of the opinion -- which he made available to all who'd listen as they wrestled a coop of live chickens up the side of the ship -- that the sodding Navy had ruined their captain's mood, turning up unannounced like that; but Bill Turner, capable and steady and constitutionally better-suited (a peculiarity in his profession) to drinking only _enough_ , sent each complainant on his way with a few cheerful generalisations, and a hint that Jack Sparrow had a Plan.

Shaftoe was not the only man to have been left behind, as it happened; the haste of their departure, not a day after docking, had seen to that. Most of the dozen absentees were doubtless enjoying the rest of their shore leave, oblivious to the _Pearl_ 's imminent departure -- oblivious, indeed, to anything at all, and not likely to relinquish their drunken slumbers for a while yet.

"Will Shaftoe have the sense to stay put, d'you reckon?" Bill asked Tom Cox, who'd come aboard with Jack Shaftoe from that sievey sugar-ship, not a month ago.

Tom, making fast a halyard, shrugged. "Depends what kept 'im, I'd say. If he's found himself a friendly girl, he might stick around for a while. If he's found himself a fight, he could be anywhere."

"Well," said Bill, who was almost certain that girls hadn't come into it, "the _Pearl_ 'll be back this way, some time soon."

That was probably meant to reassure Tom, who was looking concerned at his old mate's continued absence: but Bill's words drifted up, between the roar and rush of rising sailcloth, into the foretop, where Jack Sparrow scowled indiscriminately down at his First Mate and the new recruit, and raised his spyglass again.

Ostensibly, he was checking out that Navy ship; her brasswork shone, her shrouds were whitened and taut, and she carried twenty-four guns, eight-pounders, in addition to the pivot-guns at bow and stern. Her captain -- an elderly, slab-faced gentleman with a pronounced limp -- was not personally known to Jack, and he had heard little of the ship herself: brought south to chart the Spanish Main, someone had told him when she'd first arrived in the Caribbean, but if she had been cruising the coast she'd done so very quietly indeed, without disturbing or alarming any of the pirates, smugglers and slavers who conducted their business there. Unusual for a Navy ship, especially one with such sharp teeth, to be shy of bad company, but it was all to Jack's favour, and he felt confident that the _Orion_ would not blacken her immaculate record by harassing the mysterious _Dark Lady_ , never mind whether any of her men were clever enough to see through that disguise and identify her as the _Black Pearl_. He looked kindly, through the telescope, upon her captain; who flinched, as though stung by Jack Sparrow's secret gaze.

His intention had been to examine the _Orion_ 's new captain, come out from England to replace old Blass after he'd fallen victim to the yellow fever: a great deal could be deduced from a man's manner, and his behaviour when he thought himself unobserved. But Jack found himself once more scanning the waterfront, looking for Jack Shaftoe, _shirtless_ Jack Shaftoe (Jack could not help but indulge his imagination), fixing his glass upon every fair-haired man in the hope -- the vain hope, by now -- that Shaftoe might make it aboard before the _Black Pearl_ sailed from Stabroek.

He didn't like the kind, tolerant expression on Bill Turner's face; didn't like it at all, for it spoke of Bill indulging his captain, and Jack had to admit (only to himself, and only when he was thinking about something else) that Bill'd been right to doubt Barbossa. But Jack Shaftoe was quite different. Bill might think Shaftoe'd run; Jack himself had contemplated that possibility, and it had done nothing for his mood. But Shaftoe and he had come to some sort of an accord, and if Jack Shaftoe had wanted no more of what he'd seemed to want so very much, last night -- Jack shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease the burn of Shaftoe's enthusiasm -- then he'd have said so. Jack was almost certain of this, and in time, he felt sure, he'd be quite positive. The only thing that would prove him wrong would be Shaftoe showing up out of the blue and telling Jack, to his face, that he wished none of it, none of their shared pleasures last night, had happened.

And that, of course, would give Jack Sparrow another opportunity to convince him.

The fore topsail was rising, blocking Jack's view of the _Orion_ , though not before he'd caught the glint of her captain's own telescope, examining his lovely _Pearl_ \-- or, rather, the strangely alluring lines of the _Dark Lady_ , with her bright beads and scarlet canvas trim. Surely the _Orion_ wouldn't give chase, half-provisioned as she was and with some, at least, of her crew ashore? She'd never catch the _Black Pearl_ , anyway; and even if she did, matters were unlikely to fall out in her favour. But Jack had no wish to damage his own precious ship, and no great desire to attract the attention of the Navy; he had other matters with which to concern himself.

And perhaps now was the time to look more closely at the Spanish Don's treasure-map and that damned Codex. Maybe the gleam of gold would distract him from the remembrance of the way Jack Shaftoe had looked up at him, last night, as Jack had thrust himself down on Shaftoe's broad cock (Jack squirmed at the thought, and then remembered that he was under observation; and hoped that the Navy captain could make out his expression through that little glass of his), taking it all, groaning as the sheer _feel_ of it -- not yet unpicked into pleasure, pain, need, burn, stretch -- washed over him like a wave breaking over a rock. Oh Christ, he wanted that again. Even if Jack Shaftoe never wanted to take it from Jack (which would be a damned shame) he could give it out any time he liked.

... Enough. Jack adjusted himself, tucked his telescope into his sash and scrambled back down the shrouds.

"Mr Turner," he said, "I'll be in the stern cabin."

Bill nodded understandingly.

"Plotting out our course," snapped Jack. "Time the _Pearl_ made good on her reputation. Take the helm, would you? Have the boys take off the paint and trimmings, once we've rounded the headland. And set a course west along the coast."

A long afternoon's work at the chart-table, salving thoughts of the vanishment of Jack Shaftoe with muttered calculations and laborious comparison of Codex and coastline, left Jack more at peace with himself, if not with the world. The Spaniard's map was like a puzzle, and he the one best-suited to unravelling it; no one but a man who'd sailed this coast for years, and knew, besides, his numbers and his navigation, could hope to reach the secluded cove where that Spanish Don -- grandfather of the gentleman whose house had been so conveniently unsecured when Captain Jack Sparrow paid him a visit -- had buried his daughter's dowry. Unable to return for it, he'd handed over the Codex and kept the map against his son-in-law's good behaviour; but said son-in-law had turned out a poor husband, and the map had stayed with the grandfather, while the Codex had come (purely by good fortune) to Jack Sparrow, in a sheaf of plundered paperwork. And now, as dusk fell and the watch on deck became rowdier in anticipation of their dinner, he could squint at the crabbed handwriting -- all curlicues and flourishes -- on the map, and place his ink-stained forefinger on one little notch in the intricate shoreline of the Orinoco delta, and say aloud, "There."

If only he could find Jack Shaftoe so easily.

* * *

The week's weather had been fine, with a steady wind carrying the _Black Pearl_ west from Stabroek, just in sight of the coast -- for it was hurricano season, and Jack Sparrow had no intention of allowing his ship to be driven onto a lee shore by a sudden storm -- towards the Spanish treasure-trove. The delta of the great Orinoco River was mazy with inlets and islets, and several times Jack glimpsed lurking masts amid the jungle-green; but the _Black Pearl_ was never pursued.

He hadn't told the crew much. "This map," he had declaimed, holding it high, "leads the patient man to buried treasure, and --"

"What about us, then, Jack?" shouted some wit. "We ain't patient!"

"You, mate?" said Jack cheerfully. "You're at liberty to return to Stabroek -- though it's a fair old swim -- and find someone more... _impetuous_... to sail with." He noticed Bill, good dependable Bill, scowling at Bailey, who'd made that remark about patience: the man had never got along with Barbossa, though, and had shown no signs of agreeing with him over anything, so 'twas unlikely that he'd be fermenting any new dissent. Jack grimaced at his own uneasiness. "Those who've the _patience_ to hear me out, though, will receive their share of whatever treasure's to be found."

"What treasure is there, then?" called Rob Miller. "Treasure to spend, or just more of yer books and papers?"

Jack spread his hands. "Now, that I haven't been able to discover. For all I know it's some babe's milk teeth, or a book of sinful pictures from Hindoostan." The crew laughed at that, having lately been treated to a look at one such book -- found in a lady's baggage -- before Jack'd hidden it away. "One man's treasure is another man's rubbish, aye? But that old Spanish Don, he thought it worth drawing a map to this treasure, and packing his map full o' secrets and clues and puzzles." The worst puzzle of all had been the man's handwriting, but Jack did not mention that. "And that's why the treasure might well be there even now, waiting for us all to unbury it. Now, are ye with me?"

"Aye!" they'd chorused; and though a couple of them had muttered about wild goose chases, and treasure that wasn't worth the trouble of digging it up, no one seemed set against the notion.

"And what next, Jack?" said Bill later, when they were sitting together in the stern cabin. Jack was drinking steadily -- he'd found more of a taste for it, of late -- and he squinted at his friend, surprised by the question.

"What next, mate? Why, more of the same, I'd say. What else would we do? Pirates, mate, remember?"

"Never mind all that," said Bill. "You going back for Jack Shaftoe?"

Jack leaned back on his stool, propping his shoulders against the bulkhead, and stared at Bill. "Why'd'you ask? What's it to you?"

"Seemed like the two of you were getting along nicely, last I saw."

Jack had a brief, intense sense-memory of that evening: tavern-noise, Bill cackling like a lunatic; the reek of the perfume Jack himself had worn to cover the smell of his own, undeniably male, sweat, and the rum he'd downed as some sort of libation to Fate; the coolness of the air on his newly-razored chin; the feel of Jack Shaftoe's hand, through the silk, on his waist.

Bloody, bloody hell. He drained his cup, and said, "Well, he ain't here now." It came out sounding more bitter than he'd intended.

"You need to make sure he went 'cause he wanted to," persisted Bill.

"Why?"

Bill just looked at his captain. "Next you'll be telling me he's nothing to you."

Jack glowered at his First Mate. "Barbossa --"

"Barbossa was different, Jack, an' you know it," said Bill firmly. "Well rid of the bastard, if you ask me, though I reckon you should've made sure he wouldn't be back to bother you."

Jack waved a hand. "I don't see him, Mr Turner."

"He won't rest, Captain," said Bill. "Not 'til he's paid you back for catching him out."

"Well," said Jack Sparrow, with a sharp-edged smile, "he'd better find me first; and I ain't on that little islet, far away to the east, that I so kindly gifted to him. Reckon I'll sleep easy in my bunk tonight."

"Easier if Jack Shaftoe was there next to you," came a voice; and Jack scowled and looked around, but found only Bill Turner's puzzled face. It hadn't been him speaking, either: Bill had more sense than to push the subject of Shaftoe, and his relations with Jack Sparrow, past Jack's patience, frayed and patched as it was at present.

Voices, though; 'twas almost enough to incline Jack to give credence to Shaftoe's phant'sy of that Imp of the Perverse; almost enough to have him imagining its spectral claws scrabbling at his neck (where the marks of Jack Shaftoe's affections were fading all too fast) and urging him back to Stabroek, back to that inn, back to the quayside...

From on deck came the lookout's relayed cry, sighting the dip and curve of the Spaniard's cove on the distant shore. And Jack Sparrow, oddly relieved at the interruption, wove to his feet -- good rum, this -- and made his way above, pretending that he did not see Bill's concern.

The little cove made an idyllic harbour; a beach of white sand, lapped gently by waves that sparkled in the late sun; a steep beach, and deep water not a hundred feet from the tide-line.

The treasure-trove, nestled beneath the roots of a great tree at the edge of the beach -- _exactly_ where Jack Sparrow had determined that it would be, a fact on which he congratulated himself quietly but sincerely -- was less idyllic. It was hardly untold wealth. Hardly wealth of any sort. There were bundled papers (Jack appropriated those) and a broken box-compass, its needle swinging wildly, and a single bag of heavy coins at the bottom of the casket. Neither Jack nor Bill had seen their like before, but they were of soft buttery gold, and there were enough of them, counted out in front of the whole company, on the capstan-head -- Jack forewent his own share -- for each man to have a single coin.

"We'll lie in port tonight!" Jack Sparrow cried, and every man brightened as though they'd come upon a great treasure. And perhaps there was one, after all, hidden in the papers; but Jack doubted it.

They doubled back and dropped anchor at Morawhanna, one of the little fishing towns that was not yet wholly Spanish. There were coloured lamps all along the quay, luring the _Black Pearl_ 's company to spend their paltry plunder in this or that tavern, brothel, or cookhouse.

Jack Sparrow was in a foul mood. Shaftoe's abandoned shirt stank, now, only of Jack's own sweat; the stubble of his re-emerging beard itched like fleabites; the company, while not mutinous, was low in spirits; and Jack himself had no appetite for card-playing or stuffing himself with roast fowl. Certainly none at all for pleasurable company, despite the buxom ladies who were giggling on the balcony of the tavern. He settled in a corner of the courtyard, with Bill and Tom Cox for company, and drank the dark local ale steadily, until the ground began to sway.

Bill and Tom were bickering about the life of a merchant-sailor, compared to that of a pirate.

"Freedom!" said Bill enthusiastically, and Tom made a rude noise.

"Freedom to hang," he said. "Freedom to run away."

"Now, mate, are we running? I don’t think we're running."

How utterly predictable. Jack tilted his hat over his face, in preparation for the stupor that was sure to overcome him. He let the conversation drift in and out of focus, like Bill and Tom themselves, and felt the noise of the tavern rolling over him like a wave.

And out of that wave, like a sharp fin glimpsed for a moment, came a name: "Barbossa".


	13. Navigational Errors, ch 13

  
  
The sentence had not been unreasonable -- a round dozen -- but the bosun, who had no liking for pirates or their presumed allies, was laying them on as heavily as he could. It was not, by a long chalk, the first time that Jack Shaftoe had been flogged, and he knew how to take it; to lean into the whistle of the cat, rather than flinching away from it as did first offenders, and those unconcerned with the opinion of their audience. This way the nine separate knotted lashes had less distance to travel, less time to build up the speed that ripped skin and then blood from his back. It still bloody hurt, and Jack distracted himself by unfocussing his gaze, letting the grating and the shrouds in front of him blur into a dim netting, and superimposing upon them a series of vignettes.

With the first stroke he thought of Bob, good old Bob, who'd washed his back after many a beating, and recited to him, on each occasion, the error of his ways. Jack wondered what he'd say now, confronted with Resisting An Officer (a perfectly natural impulse, in Jack's view) and Consorting with Pirates. Bob, no doubt, would approve of pirates on strictly pragmatic grounds, though Jack doubted that those would extend to sodomy.

'Sodomy', in his head, chimed appropriately with the whistle-and-smack of the second lash; and brought to mind Captain Jack Sparrow, inspiration of a good many of Jack's random impulses of late. True, the ultimate blame accrued to -- "Three!" -- the Imp of the Perverse, his intimate companion these many years; but the Imp had been strangely silent of late, though perhaps that was just because the opportunities for merriment on board the _Orion_ \-- a dull ship, perhaps even duller than the unlamented _Henrietta Marie_ , and His Majesty's Ship to boot -- were slim to none.

"Four!" He could feel the blood starting now, and his entire back burning with the rush of it. Not so very different to the flood of heat he'd felt two nights ago, in the hot upper room of that inn, balls-deep in the unexpected grip of Sparrow's body, Sparrow braced against him and _looking_ at him with those eyes, so black and devilish, and --

"Five!"

\--and surely the Imp and Sparrow were conspiring against him, for two things were happening now that Jack Shaftoe did not expect, and would have laughed to hear mentioned in this context. Firstly, and not so very unthinkably, he was growing annoyed with the bosun; not, as he might've predicted, for the flogging itself -- following orders, the universal exculpation -- but for interrupting his thoughts. And, more improbable ("Six!") by far, the interrupted thought of Jack Sparrow, naked and aroused and very far from passive, was making him _hard_. Although he'd have imagined that the blood in his body had better things to do with itself; like rushing to the skin of his back, and from there dripping ("Seven!") from the long horizontal weals that the cat was raising.

He didn't want to think about the way that it hurt; no use in that, and while he was thinking about Sparrow the pain seemed a long way away, as though it might belong to some other reprobate. ("Eight!") Jack Shaftoe had endured worse; he'd suffered suppurating wounds (not all of them on the battlefield), fevers, the nasty chancres of the Pox -- hang on, surely they'd called "eight!" a second time?

Jack raised his head; the movement brought a wave of nausea, and pulled at the ripped skin of his back. He saw the grinning, gap-toothed visage of that Marine Sergeant, and knew that the miscounting was no mistake; and, too, that there was no recourse. He must stand and bear it without a sound.

Maybe that little shit Dick Porter would look after him while his back healed. More likely, given the Navy's reputation for purposeless inhumanity, Jack'd be ordered aloft as soon as he could move, and no concessions made.

"Nine!"

Maybe Jack Sparrow would come after him, with the _Black Pearl_ 's long guns blazing, and blow this prim rulebound Navy skiff out of the water (pausing, of course, to haul Jack Shaftoe on board and offer him rum and various other comforts and delights, before sailing away from the blackened wreckage and the screaming, shark-gnawed survivors).

"Ten!"

See, thought Jack, somewhat light-headed from not thinking about the pain (which by some tortuous logic permitted him to think about Jack Sparrow, thoughts with a level of detail which he'd denied himself 'til now), see, Jack, there's a trick to everything; and the trick to this -- "Eleven!" -- is to let the time pass unnoticed.

He found himself wondering how the pain of a flogging compared with the pain of being buggered. Should've asked Jack Sparrow, whose hot golden skin bore the faint stripes of layered misdemeanors. Sparrow, though, hadn't looked as though buggery hurt him at all. Quite the reverse. He'd thrown his head back in ecstasy, breathing hard, pushing himself --

What was this? They were cutting him down. _That_ hurt more than the rest of it, and surely there was another stroke to be dealt?

But Jack Shaftoe, though often called a fool, was not quite fool enough to question the bosun's count; and it was entirely possible that he'd missed the count himself, distracted by thoughts of Consorting.

"Takes some blokes that way," said Dick Porter -- a man who could make an observation on the weather sound like the lewdest of suggestions -- and Jack realised that his state of arousal was all too evident through his light breeches. Dick was supporting him, Dick and some other fellow he didn't know by name -- a foreign type -- and Jack was leaning heavily on them as they led him for'ard.

He laughed, though it came out sounding unpleasantly like a consumptive's cough, and tried to say something; but Dick was making him lie down on a pallet of folded sailcloth -- good man, and Jack might just forgive him for turning Navy some day -- and pressing a pewter flask into his hand.

"Now, mate, this is going to hurt," he said; and Jack wanted to congratulate him on saying something pertinent and truthful for what might have been the first time in his life. The words stuck in his throat. Dick was tipping a bucket of icy sea-water over him, and it _did_ hurt, far worse than the flogging had done; and when he thought of Jack Sparrow now, the only result was a little irritation, and a great deal of wistfulness, to add new depths to the pain.

He did not make a noise as the stinging water washed away the worst of his blood; for none of them would understand that it was not the pain that made him cry out.

* * *

Over the next week, Jack Shaftoe retracted his promise -- in any case it had not been verbal -- to forgive Dick Porter's defection to His Majesty's Navy. Dick, true enough, looked after Shaftoe (with whom he'd traveled from London, months ago now, in hope of clement weather and exotic vices) and sat by Shaftoe's makeshift pallet on the gundeck, Jack being quite unable to roll into, or out of, a hammock for some days. Dick brought him water, and rum or beer according to what was available, and food of a nondescript but harmless kind; but he also talked, and for a man with little to say he said it at great length.

It didn't help that -- for reasons unknown to Jack Shaftoe, and surely only circumstantial anyway -- Dick Porter regarded Jack as a recent convert to the joys of sodomy. (That this was an accurate assessment was beside the point.) This newfound commonality of purpose made it painfully obvious, at least to Dick, that the two of them somehow belonged together; that Jack Shaftoe and himself, no more than casual acquaintances when they'd stood on Tilbury Steps that cold autumn night, waiting for the watch to change on the armaments ship moored out in the middle of the Thames, were now blood-brothers, bonded forever.

Jack, with some vague residue of common sense from his time with Bob, was not so delirious that he failed to recognise the futility -- not to mention the stupidity -- of arguing with Dick, at least while his creature comforts depended on the other man. And yet he was beginning to be more than a little suspicious of Dick's motives. There'd been that night, a couple of days after the flogging, when Dick had been on duty and had not brought any rum. Jack had contrived to escape the pain by means of a powerfully affecting phant'sy, or perhaps memory; he had been grinding his hips against the thin mattress, murmuring _oh Christ please again, again_ , with the most exquisitely explicit image behind his closed eyes; and all at once, uniquely unpleasant, the noise that Jack Sparrow made in Jack's imagination was overlaid by Dick Porter's nasal voice enquiring greasily as to whether Jack liked it rough.

"I like a girl with spirit, aye," said Jack brusquely, aware that it sounded weak. What if (his delirium-drunk Imp prompted) Dick Porter could see into his head, where Jack Sparrow leaned back groaning, running his fingers along the centre of Jack's chest? What if Jack himself bore the marks -- a bite, a scratch, or maybe something less corporeal -- of Sparrow's ministrations? Perhaps Dick Porter could read every minute of that night, simply by looking at Jack Shaftoe as he lay supine and pinkly healing.

But he'd been a buccaneer's bum-boy himself, hadn't he? Had seemed, in fact, to acquire quite a taste for it, back in Port Royal while Jack was sticking to his principles and watching his back. Though Jack'd bet -- and _would_ bet, out loud, if this fever didn't quench itself soon -- that Dick Porter had no notion of fucking another man. Fucking a pirate. Jack Sparrow. (Oh god, Jack Sparrow.) Dick, it had to be said -- though the very notion made Jack vaguely queasy -- was the sort who took it, not the sort who gave it out, and the notion of anything so one-sided, so narrow-minded, so _uneven_ , was quite repulsive to Jack, and quite separate to the ideas that came to mind whenever he thought of Jack Sparrow.

Dick hadn't made any response to Jack's comment about girls. He hadn't said a word, in fact; just stood there, staring at Jack in the gloom in a way that sent uncomfortable twitches through the newly-grown skin on Jack's spine.

"Remember girls, Dick?" needled Jack. "Din't you have one, once?"

"Ah," confided Dick, "but it's not the same, is it?" And the look he bent upon Jack Shaftoe made Jack flush and itch all over.

After that moment -- not quite an Incident, but planting the most horrid suggestions in Jack Shaftoe's idle brain -- Jack had abandoned his initial plan, which was to remain useless and unnoticed until he slipped away at the _Orion_ 's next port of call. Instead, he'd presented himself to the first mate, who was in charge of the larboard watch (Dick being on the starboard) and announced himself ready for duty.

The first mate, Larsen, looked Jack up and down. "Fit for it?" he said.

"Nothing that fresh air an' hard work won't fix, sir," lied Jack, making a blatant show of manful endurance. He ached and itched abominably, it was true; but he was set on escaping the stenchful underdeck, the increasingly unsubtle appraisal of his former fellow-stowaway, and the very notion of Naval discipline. Desertion would be difficult enough without him being prone on a pallet, and besides if he had to spend one more afternoon in Dick's company he might well throttle him.

The captain of the _Orion_ , Hammill by name, was a mild man; Jack had observed him on the poop-deck, though of course they had not spoken, and had noted a certain distaste in his expression when called upon to mete out punishment. It had not saved Jack Shaftoe his flogging, but then he'd been marked from the start -- despite his protestations of innocence -- as a man who'd sailed on a pirate ship, and thus was half-pirate himself. Not that Captain Hammill seemed to object very strongly to the taint of piracy; he was keener by far to avoid confrontation, and more than once the _Orion_ lurked up-creek, hidden by the luxuriant forest, while some other ship sailed past in open water, oblivious to the Navy's presence. Jack Shaftoe could not give two figs for Captain Hammill's reasoning, but he bitterly resented the withholding of escape opportunities. Any one of those passing ships might have been the _Black Pearl_ ; any one of them might have carried him away from Navy rules and rigour.

Meanwhile, he pulled on this rope or that, as required; went aloft with more alacrity than most, having learnt to like the freedom of the upper air during his much-mourned time on the _Black Pearl_ ; slept, or lazed belly-down in his hammock, strung inconveniently next to the loquacious Mr Porter's; and, most nights, endured the sounds of the _Orion_ 's crew doing unto one another as he'd done to Jack Sparrow.

But with Sparrow (Jack slipped a hand beneath himself, clutching at his swelling prick) it'd been different. Not one of these men could hold a candle to Jack Sparrow, not in looks or wit or that especial dark wickedness that Jack had noted lurking in Sparrow's sideways glances. There was no one here -- very much including Dick Porter, whose pale blue eyes had acquired a wet, unhealthy gleam whenever his gaze fell upon Jack -- to whom he'd give any more than a knee in the bollocks, were they to make an approach. So whatever it was that Dick Porter thought he could see -- and if it had been some actual mark on Jack's body, surely the flogging would've overwritten it? -- was solely there for Jack Sparrow, no matter how tenderly Dick had washed Jack Shaftoe's back, or how generously he'd shared his ration of cheap Navy rum.

This particular afternoon, the starboard watch was aloft, and Jack off-duty. He was settling down for a lengthy reminiscence upon that last evening with Jack Sparrow -- not excluding the phant'sied possibility of _future_ encounters, or rather opportunities, which he dearly longed to experience despite the temporary setback of having mislaid, or been mislaid by, Captain Jack Sparrow and the _Pearl_ \-- when the sound of running feet on the deck, inches above his head, distracted him.

Jack stroked himself hard, and tried to recapture the worryingly arousing image -- Sparrow leaning over him, and Jack, this time, on the receiving end of what he'd so enjoyably dished out to the pirate -- but the noise from above continued unabated. Then, "Pirates!" cried someone, relaying the call from the masthead, echoing Jack's daydream with uncanny timing; and the entirety of the larboard watch exploded into action in the space around Jack, ruining his mood entirely. Yet Jack Shaftoe -- tipped rudely from his hammock and his dream by some passing joker -- could not have been said to be disappointed. He couldn't find his shirt, but that scarcely mattered now. Grinning fit to split his face, he headed for the ladder.

"What're you looking so damned pleased about?" said old Wood; and Dick Porter -- sprung from some dark corner, though his watch was up above -- said, "Ah, Jack reckons --"

Jack shoved past him, not really bothering to make it look like an accident, and said, "Pirate attack, eh?" He fixed the thought of Barbossa and his fellow-mutineers more firmly in his head. Important to look sincere about this, or he'd be bundled into the brig before any opportunity for further travel presented itself. "Preying on the innocent -- nasty bunch -- I'll not let 'em take me without a fight! Nay, nor this ship!"

Now, _that_ was an unfortunate choice of words, and Jack (nodding modestly at the murmured acclaim) blamed his Imp; for now he was fired, not only with the hope of rescue, but with the notion of being taken, _letting_ himself be taken -- urging Sparrow to...

"A'course, you was a buccaneer's boy, wasn't you?" said Wood, with a crude gesture.

Jack just grinned ferociously at him (Wood flinched gratifyingly), and said, "Unlike old Dick here, I don't bend over for just anyone, mate."

And it was true; for Jack Sparrow was far from being just anyone. Indeed, Jack thought that there might be nothing else like him anywhere in the world. And perhaps, perhaps, he'd come for...

They surged up the ladder into the humid afternoon air; someone (Dick?) knocked into Jack, sending all the new nerves in his back a-jangling, and he swore. And swore again, as he saw the creamy sail swooping down out of the open sea towards the _Orion_ ; stooping like a hawk upon its prey.


	14. Navigational Errors, ch 14

  
  
The tavern on Morawhanna Quay -- known, as far as Jack Sparrow could determine, only by the name of its current owner, Bloody Matt -- had formerly been notable for two things: the dark ale that Bloody Matt brewed in a lean-to behind the main tavern; and the cool, shady courtyard in which pirates, merchant sailors, pickpockets, whores, boatmen, alchemists and hired thugs took their ease, inhaling the commingled odours of roast fowl, stale vomit and cheap perfume. To this sensory cornucopia had lately been added a third element that piqued Captain Jack Sparrow's interest; the name of his former First Mate, the mutinous Barbossa.

Nothing much in a name, 'less one assembled one's own legend around it; and Jack was keen to let Barbossa's own tale shrink away to nothing for lack of airing. But here was someone, some thick-voiced sailor (Jack peered out from beneath the lowered brim of his tricorne, but there were no familiar faces save his own men from the _Pearl_ ) drinking by chance in Bloody Matt's tonight, sitting not ten feet from him and speaking of Barbossa. Speaking of ships, of plans, of fearsome oaths; not of unnamed sandbars, black treachery and retribution.

"D'you hear that, Bill?" said Jack idly, as though it didn't matter. "D'you catch that name?"

Bill, arguing (and losing his argument) with Tom Cox, had not heard it; for now he broke off mid-sentence and listened with his head down. Jack watched the muscles in his neck tauten as the speaker mentioned Barbossa once more.

"I'll --" began Bill, flushing with loyal indignation.

"You'll stay where you are," said Jack mildly. "Tom, if you'd be so kind? A good-looking lad like yourself, a fresh face: they'll be glad of your company over there."

"Aye," said Bill softly, when Tom had plucked Sparrow's coin out of the air and taken himself off to spy. "Aye, no reason in letting them know we're here. Jack --"

"Or _who's_ here, mate," said Jack. "No names, eh?"

"What d'ye think he's up to?"

"I reckon he's found a way off that little snip of sand."

"I said you should've --"

"Don't I know it, mate." Jack leaned back against the wall, showing his teeth in a humourless grin, and made sure that his pistol was in sight. "I knew he'd be back, but I wanted him gone, savvy? He wasn't worth the killing. Not then."

"Now?" said Bill, eyebrows raised; and Jack grinned broader and nastier, and said, "Maybe now."

Then Tom was back with them, crouched low like a dog beside the bench where Jack sat, and he murmured, "Barbossa's been recruitin'."

"Is that right?" said Jack, keeping his voice down. "When, and where, eh? And who's he been talking to, Tom?"

The former first mate of the _Black Pearl_ , it seemed, had made a signal somehow, there on that bald sandy islet that was barely uncovered at high tide. He'd made a signal, and brought a fishing-boat to his rescue. And now that nameless boat -- a native craft, a perogua, light and fast -- was packed thwart to thwart with his own fellow castaways, and with pirates and cutthroats from every pub and gutter along the coast.

Tom did not mention the fate of the fishermen who'd taken mercy on a poor shipwrecked sailor: but Jack could guess it.

"And where's he headed, eh?"

"They say he's out to take a great ship," murmured Tom. "A fighting ship. And then -- then, Captain -- he's coming after the _Black Pearl_."

Unfortunate that the conversation ebbed for a moment, then, and Tom's last words sounded quite clearly in the lull.

Jack kept his head down and a smile on his face, and examined Bloody Matt's other customers out of the corner of his eye. That mob there, 'round the table by the door; they looked very alert at the name of the _Pearl_. And now one of them -- a tall, heavy man with a bandolier across his bare, dark chest, who Jack did not think he'd ever seen before -- was getting to his feet, and coming towards the corner where the three of them sat.

"What you doing, noising our business around?" he demanded of Tom.

Tom looked helplessly at Jack.

"'Tis a matter of more than passing interest to me," said Jack kindly, tilting his tricorne back so that the other man could see his face. There was no spark of recognition -- annoying, though convenient -- and so Jack expanded on his remark. "Anyone who's after the _Black Pearl_ , the scourge of the Spanish Main, has earned my respect -- aye, and my gratitude."

"Aye?" said the pirate. "And why's that?"

"Why, I hear she's nigh uncatchable," Jack said softly, leaning forward. "And surely, the last I heard, Barbossa was her Mate?"

"He had a falling-out with her captain," said the other. "Sparrow, that's the name. Sparrow left him marooned over some imagined slight. It's not jus' the ship, for Barbossa; he wants Sparrow too."

Jack suppressed a shiver, and made his smile more sharply appreciative. "So it's revenge he's after?"

"Aye," said Barbossa's man. "Eventually. Are you with us?" His eyes scanned Jack's visible weaponry -- sword and pistol -- and returned to his face.

"Here? Tonight?" exclaimed Bill, and Jack was thankful for the interruption, and for the almost palpable lessening of pressure when the pirate's gaze slid from him to Bootstrap.

But if Barbossa were here, then he'd have seen the _Black Pearl_ , lying at anchor (Jack fought the urge to turn and look) in Morawhanna's little harbour. Even now --

"Not tonight," said the pirate, with a broad, broken-toothed grin. "Tonight he's huntin' other prey. But when he brings her in, his new ship, then we're set."

"And when'll that be?" said Tom, with more enthusiasm than either Bill or Jack would've managed.

The pirate shrugged. "Who knows? But if you're with us, be ready. Within the week, if the wind's fair."

He nodded at them and turned away.

"An' if we're not with 'im?" said Tom, very softly.

"Then better be out of sight, and out of mind," said Jack. "Bill, Tom, round up whosoever you can find. I've a notion to be gone by morning."

* * *

"The _Orion_? But she's Navy!"

Jack shrugged, and winced; the long muscles in his back were aching with the work of extracting the _Black Pearl_ from Morawhanna Harbour. Without the sweeps, and with the wind in the north-east, she'd have been helpless prey for Barbossa's latest mob by sunrise (or more likely, given their relish for Bloody Matt's hospitality, by noon), when they saw her all dark and stately in the sunshine; but that didn't stop Jack cursing the damned oars and his own decision to row the _Pearl_ around the point, and out of the way of her enemies.

Others might have stood on the poop-deck and simply called the strokes, but Jack Sparrow had never been the sort of captain to set himself apart. Though at the moment, all he wanted to do was to set a course and crawl off into his bunk, there to dream of ...

Perhaps he should be grateful to Barbossa for distracting him. He'd hardly thought of Jack Shaftoe all night; and thinking of him now, after hours of planning and working, made the night's business feel trivial, though it was not.

"Navy she might be," he said to Bill, trying to stop thinking about Shaftoe. "But great fighting ships are few and far between, save for the Spanish, and Barbossa's not such a fool as to try for one of theirs when three more'll be after him. If he's out to win one at this moment, then she'll be close, and so will he. Savvy?"

"Aye," said Bill doggedly. "But why're we after saving a Navy ship? She'd not think of saving us; quite the contrary."

"We're not _with_ her, mate," said Jack. "We're _against_ Barbossa. The bastard's bad enough with a perogua; imagine him with twenty-four guns --"

"-- without the men to fight 'em --"

"Ah, but you're forgetting," said Jack. "Barbossa's a slippery glib fellow. He'll promise them gold and rum and good company, and before you know it, he'll have a hundred men. And then woe betide the _Black Pearl_ and all who sail on her."

"Sounds like he's saving it all up for you, Captain," said Bill, frowning.

"Well," said Jack, bitter and brittle, "it's good to be wanted."

Bill gave him a long, considering look, and Jack scowled when his expression softened, for he would have wagered a fortune on predicting Bill's next sentence.

"Are we going back for Mr Shaftoe?"

Jack awarded himself that imaginary fortune, albeit on a technicality; he'd had the gist of it right enough, though he'd not thought Bootstrap's sensibilities so delicate as to phrase it as a question.

"Mr Shaftoe," he said heavily, challenging Bill to argue, "has doubtless taken up with some strumpet by now." Bill opened his mouth to disagree, and Jack raised his voice. "That's what he was after, back in Stabroek. What he thought he was getting, eh? A dark skinny lass with a good mouth on her." Not a man; not an equal; not a friend. "So let's hope, for Mr Shaftoe's sake, that he's happy with her, eh? "

Bill grinned at him, the bastard, and said, "So we're going back, then?"

"Too sharp, Mr Turner," said Jack, scowling; "you'll cut yourself." He stood up, stretching and grimacing at the burn in his back. "I'm for my bunk. Wake me if you sight the _Orion_ , or anything that might be Barbossa's little boat."

He left Bill, smirking, in the stern cabin, and closed the door of his own cabin behind him. It was dark in here -- the single porthole firmly covered against the morning light -- and there was no longer a lantern casting a soft glow over everything. (Nor, Jack couldn't help thinking, was Jack Shaftoe there to be thus illuminated: a sad deficiency that he could not, yet, see a way to remedy.)

Dark, and quiet, and private: but still Jack lay awake while the watch on deck trimmed the sails to catch the rising wind. He tried to think about Barbossa, and how he might (must) be defeated, and how the _Black Pearl_ might sail safe and free; but, more and more, the whole projected chase seemed merely a prelude. Barbossa dealt with, Jack would be free to pursue his own interests. And he would seek out Jack Shaftoe, more tempting than any Spaniard's hoard, and ask him plain: will you come with me, and be mine, and make me yours?

* * *

Hunting the hunter (Jack laughed aloud at this, and then had to explain the story of Orion to Tom and Joe) was a dull business. Any vine-laced inlet, any delta backwater, might hide the tall masts and gleaming brass of the naval vessel. As for Barbossa's anonymous perogua, it might as well have sprouted legs and crept off into the forest, as boats did in the Indians' tales. Jack Sparrow had sailed this coast for years, and he had seen a perogua flee into swamp country, beneath the massive mangroves; had chased a small-drafted, many-oared pirate cutter into water so shallow that the men might scramble out without getting their knees wet. Barbossa might be hiding anywhere; only the _Orion_ would draw him out.

Oh yes, a slow tedious business, enlivened only by Jack Sparrow's frequent forays ashore. He or Bill (or Tom Cox, who was becoming marvellously handy and practical, and who was ever so much less likely than Bill to mention Jack Shaftoe in his captain's hearing) would bargain for fresh fruit and perhaps bread, or fish. Then Jack would take aside one man or another -- the fishermen, if they were not all out at sea; for Jack was ensuring that word of Barbossa's most recent barbarities made its way swifter than lies along the coast -- and ask, carefully, for news. Was there a motley hungry gang of pirates in a perogua? (And had you heard, then, how they came by it?) Was there a tall ship from England, sailing past just in sight of the shore? A landing-party, perhaps, come for water? (A place upriver where such a ship might lurk unnoticed while the pirate band went by?)

And sometimes, if he were feeling especially optimistic, he'd ask if they'd any news of a yellow-haired Englishman, travelling alone.

"A pirate, yes?" said one man eagerly.

"Not a pirate," said Jack; and then wondered if, after all, Jack Shaftoe had simply played a double game, and was now sailing in that crowded perogua under Barbossa's command. Might even have gone back for him, knowing where that midnight sandbar lay, with a new boat and a cutthroat crew for Barbossa to command.

Somehow that was more painful than the thought of Shaftoe preferring land to sea, and maids to men; more painful, and more personal by far. But when Barbossa met his reward, why, then Jack could ask...

Jack dragged his attention back from the fruitless contemplation of _what_ he might ask the mislaid Mr Shaftoe. The fisherman -- a well-fed fellow, who perhaps did not need to take his boat out every day -- was telling him about the yellow-haired English pirate who'd lately appeared in the next village. Jack's heart leapt.

"And his eye," pantomimed the fisherman. "Like this."

Beside him, Bill burst out laughing, and pointed, and said, "Aha! That's young Ragetti!"

"Your friend?" said the fisherman anxiously; and Jack said, "Not my friend." He managed a smile to assuage the man's anxiety, and pressed a piece of Spanish silver into his hand; never mind where the fisherman might find someone who'd accept it in payment.

"Going after him?" said Bill, as they walked back down to the gig. Jack put one finger to his lips -- Bill had seen him too serious, of late -- and stopped dead on the sand, miming thought; and then said, consideringly, "Nah. Not today."

"He's Barbossa's man," said Bill.

"He's not with Barbossa now," countered Jack. "They'd have mentioned _him_ , for sure. But now you mention it, he may have a tale to tell."

The upshot of which was that young Ragetti -- last seen splashing gracelessly in the shallows of an unnamed bay, and rediscovered slumped drunkenly in the shade behind the drinking-house in a village many leagues west -- found himself waking at the sharp end of his former captain's knife, and the sharper edge of his tongue.

"Where's your fine new captain now, then, mate?" said Jack Sparrow, watching Ragetti's blood spring red around his knife-tip. He raised his eyes to meet Ragetti's lopsided gaze. "And why ain't you with him?"

"He killed me mate," said Ragetti dully. "He..." He turned aside suddenly (uncaring of the knife fretting deeper) and Jack stepped back smartly, just in time to avoid a tribute of yellow vomit over his boots.

They took Ragetti aboard -- Bill's pistol nudging the raw scarlet mark on his neck, and the crew's jeers making him flush a duller red -- and gave him water, and a little rum, and bread with sugar on it; then Jack Sparrow sat him down, and asked again, "Where?"

"He's after the _Orion_ , Captain," Ragetti said: and flushed all over again, resentfully, when he realised what he'd said.

Jack nodded, more for the title that Ragetti had bestowed upon him than for this confirmation of what he'd already deduced for himself.

"And where does Barbossa think he'll find her, eh?"

A band of fishermen coming from Bridgetown had seen the Navy ship lying at anchor, it turned out; Barbossa had paid them for their news, and smiled most amiably.

"And Pintel, 'e said Barbossa was buying himself trouble," said Ragetti with a teary, Cyclopean blink, knocking back more rum. "An'..."

"How'd he do it, Ragetti?" said Jack, leaning in close and narrowing his eyes.

"Wha'?"

"How did Barbossa kill him?" said Jack, slowly and clearly. He'd trust none of those mutinous swabs again, not as far as he could throw them from the end of a plank; but surely he could tell if Ragetti were telling the truth about his friend.

"With 'is 'ands," said Ragetti sullenly, and began to cry.

"Don't you forget that, mate," said Jack, dismissing a second's impulse to comfort the other. "That's what you chose for captain."

"We was wrong," said Ragetti wetly from behind a hand poised delicately as a girl's.

Jack leaned back, smiling that particular smile that showed off almost all of his gold teeth. "I could've told you that, mate," he said mildly. "So, what shall we do with you, eh?"

For the first time -- Jack could see the realisation dawn upon his face -- Ragetti realised that he was alone (save for Bootstrap at the door) with the captain he'd conspired against. Common sense warred with bravado, but the outcome was not worth the wager, not where Ragetti was concerned; without his dead mate's guidance, he was dangerously reckless.

"Don't care," he said.

Jack narrowed his eyes. "But you do want revenge on Barbossa, aye?"

"Aye," said Ragetti nervously.

"Then tell me where he's planning to meet with the _Orion_ ," said Jack, "and I'll let you see it done."

"The _Orion_ ," began Ragetti: and outside, through the bright afternoon, came a roll of thunder.

Jack cocked his head.

"She sailed from Bridgetown yesterday," Ragetti went on. "She'll be --"

The door flew open: and Bootstrap, a dark figure introduced -- like a god in a masque -- by another distant thunderous boom, cried, "Guns!"


	15. Navigational Errors, ch 15

  
  
The pirates were shooting towards the _Orion_ in a long, narrow craft, square-rigged with a much-mended sail that might once have been white. Their boat -- more like an Indian canoe than the pirate cutters that Jack Shaftoe had seen in coastal waters from London to Port Royal -- was bristling with armed men, a couple of them already firing off matchlocks or pistols, though they were not close enough to do much damage.

Shaftoe, one arm hooked through the ratlines as he balanced on the _Orion_ 's solid rail and shaded his eyes against the afternoon sun, swore again. His shirtless, recently-flayed back itched and stung with fresh sweat, and the men of his watch jostled him uncaringly as they rushed to the rail themselves; but far worse was the sheer injustice of the attack. If Fortuna (the pox-ridden bitch) had any fondness for Jack Shaftoe, the pirate ship would've been the _Black Pearl_ , and Jack could've jumped ship, deserted, and ...

But perhaps this was not the best of times to be thinking of Jack Sparrow. Jack leapt down to the deck and went along to the arms chest to acquire himself a weapon. Aft, he could hear the gun-captains screaming at their crews.

"Bring her to bear! Bring her down! Wait, man, wait... Fire!"

There was a horribly gradual series of explosions, and the _Orion_ rocked and shuddered violently, her timbers protesting, as several of the starboard guns fired a ragged broadside. Smoke rose like a stage-curtain from below, momentarily obliterating the boat and her ruffian crew.

"We hit her!" someone cried optimistically as the gun-smoke began to clear. Jack craned his neck to see the damage -- the pirate-vessel was dismasted now, but already too close for the guns to bear down any further, and now there were grapnels skidding across the deck, catching in the rigging, and the pirates were hauling their small, light vessel closer to the _Orion_ , right in underneath her high stern.

"Goin' for the rudder," said Wood, leaning over to spit into the sea. "Seen it before. Indian trick."

"They're pirates, not Indians!" snapped Jack, exasperated; but Wood just nodded and spat again.

The quartermaster would only give Jack a cutlass, despite his protestations (and Dick's supportive assurances, which made Jack set his teeth) of proficiency with muskets, pistols and the like. From what Jack had seen of engagements at sea, the safest place to be was aloft, looking down on the action and picking off whichever foes could be readily identified as such; but the cutlass would be useless up there, and so he resigned himself to a gory, slippery battle on deck. And of course there was no hope of escape -- had never been any, for the _Orion_ had never had any hope of outrunning the light, fast craft, even while she could still steer -- and very little of peaceable surrender.

Now Jack could hear the pirates roaring as they came. The _Orion_ 's crew were forming into some sort of defensive pattern, but Jack had no notion of his place in it. He hung back, cutlass (doubtless too blunt to be of any practical use) in his hand, and tried to reckon the odds. No point in being on the losing side, and p'rhaps these pirates would take him back to Stabroek -- assuming he could convince them that he wasn't true Navy -- or to some other port where the _Black Pearl_ had called. Never too late to change sides, to take whatever opportunity offered itself to --

But there was a flash of green from the canoe, now snugged against the rudder; and, like a punch to the gut, Jack Shaftoe saw that Barbossa was there in the bow, red hair tied back in that nasty green bandana, large as life and twice as vindictive. Jack ducked back quickly, in case Barbossa should recognise him too; though what difference that would make at this point, he did not know.

"That your man, Jack?" enquired Dick Porter, impinging upon Jack's awareness like an especially sulphurous fart.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Give it a rest, Dick!" he said. "That mob's led by Barbossa, and he's not a merciful man; and he's none too pleased with me either, I'll wager."

"Turned him down, did you?" said Dick.

"Aye," said Jack, "in a manner of speaking. Just your type, mate; just like that fellow in Port Royal."

He kept half an eye on Dick's reaction (stupidly predictable) and the rest of his attention on the men who were swarming over the ship's fancy taffrail, boarding-axes sinking into polished wood and howling Naval flesh without discrimination. The _Orion_ 's crew outnumbered the pirates, perhaps by as much as two to one; but Barbossa's mob had the advantage of surprise, and of attack. Barbossa himself had a sword in one hand, and Jack watched him draw a pistol from his sash. He had scrambled up over the taffrail, and now was hurling himself across the poop-deck towards where the captain stood, with his officers -- Larsen, Kirk and the rest of them, faces only dimly familiar yet to Jack -- around him.

Captain Hammill said, "Sir, I --"

There was a loud cracking noise. The captain's head disintegrated in a red, bloody mess: and Barbossa turned towards the waist of the ship, where his men were falling upon the crew like wolves, and he cried, "Look, all you Navy: your captain's dead: give it up!"

Jack, who still shuddered every time he remembered that he was on board a Navy ship, was nevertheless pleased (almost proud, indeed) to hear the oaths and abuse that came in answer. The fighting resumed, redoubled, and Jack could no longer avoid it.

He saw a familiar face, and despatched the man (Kruger? Koehler? Some foreign name, any rate) before he could call out any nonsense about Jack Shaftoe turning Navy. Another man, who Jack had never seen before, came at him with his cutlass raised, and Jack turned sideways, caught the blow, and slid his own blade down the other until he could chop awkwardly across at the man's neck. He fell, and Jack took his pistol -- primed and unfired, which suited Jack well, as he had neither shot nor the leisure to load it -- and kicked him out of the way.

Dick Porter was calling his name, just as if Jack owed him something. Jack snarled in exasperation. Dick, true, was his last link with home: Tom Flinch and Jemmy Taylor were on their slow way back to London Town, and Tom Cox (lucky Tom!) was aboard the beautiful _Black Pearl_ at this very moment, p'rhaps (and Jack was left nauseous by the wave of nameless feeling) consorting with her captain ... And Jack, poor bloody Jack Shaftoe, was on the heaving deck of the _Orion_ \-- her helm unmanned and her rudder jammed, she had come round into the wind and was bucking like a sick cow with each heavy swell -- with a blooded cutlass in his hand, and Dick Porter covered in blood that was clearly his own, calling to him for help with real desperation in his voice. Tim Smith, who was busy killing Dick, glanced behind him and saw Jack, and grinned nastily at him by way of greeting.

Jack found himself without a cutlass, having hurled it at Smith and caught him, point-first, below the ribs. Smith collapsed, groaning, and Dick raised his own weapon and bore down clumsily on it, like a man building a fence. Stupid sod; better to've slit his throat. Jack forbore to comment. He collected another sword from the nearest corpse, and hauled himself awkwardly aloft, not looking to see whether Dick had managed to deliver the coup de grace.

From the ratlines -- a somewhat more precarious vantage-point than usual, due to the pirates' axe-work -- Jack Shaftoe could see more of a pattern to the fighting. The pirates had come over the _Orion_ 's stern like rats swarming aboard a newly docked grain-ship, but they had fought their way nearly to the forecastle. The deck ran red with Navy and pirate blood, and each wayward yaw of the ship sent blood streaming from scupper to scupper. Off the larboard bow was gathering a convocation of sharp black fins, ready to feast; and Barbossa's men were heaving corpses overboard at the chains, where the rail was lowest.

Jack remembered the attack on the _Henrietta Marie_ ; then made himself think of something else, for his eyes had blurred abruptly, and he needed to see.

And there was Barbossa, looking right at him; coming towards him, with a broad welcoming smile.

"Jack Shaftoe, isn't it? Never thought to see _you_ again, Mr Shaftoe; not --"

Jack pulled the pistol's trigger, and Barbossa was thrown back by the impact of the ball. It had caught him in the left shoulder, and he was right-handed; not bad, though (Jack congratulated himself) for a shot that had been readied and aimed so hastily. And it had taken that lying, false-friendly smile from Barbossa's face. He was scowling at Jack now, one hand pressed against the wound, and as Jack grinned back at him, Barbossa raised his cutlass and began hacking, with horrible strength, at the shrouds.

Jack saw that to stay where he was would be certain death. Barbossa's men, their carnage more or less finished, were beginning to turn to their captain; they'd spring to his aid soon enough. And though there were Navy men still standing, here and there, each of them had an opponent, or more commonly two, on their hands; and, doubtless, little enough love to spare for Jack Shaftoe, who'd been flogged as a demi-pirate before them all last week.

So Jack seized a free-swinging halyard as it passed him, kicked off, and let himself be carried down towards the pile of corpses -- Captain Hammill's somewhere beneath them all -- at the foot of the poop-deck steps. The heap convulsed and groaned, and Jack steadied himself with a hand on what was left of the banister. Looking back, he could see Barbossa charging sure-footed over the slippery deck towards him. Jack could not help but think of bear-baitings he had watched, back in Southwark, and he grabbed up a second cutlass (discarding his shotless pistol) and backed up the steps to the poop-deck, risking quick glances behind him in case any of Barbossa's men were up there.

"Managed to find yourself a whole crew, mate?" he called to Barbossa, getting his back against the mizzen-mast. Behind and below him, the rudder groaned like a living thing; or perhaps there were men down there, still fighting and dying. Jack did not have time to look. "Or did you steal this lot off someone else, too?"

There was a pirate rushing up from behind him, and Jack swung his left arm back and caught him in the gut. He doubled over, and Jack slit his throat and sent his corpse tumbling down to lie with the others. He glanced about him. His situation was grim indeed; only a handful of the _Orion_ 's crew (Dick was nowhere to be seen) still on their feet, and Barbossa lumbering, snarling, over the bodies towards Jack. If he could provoke the pirate into an over-hasty attack, he might take him down; but there were still thirty or forty bloody-handed ruffians on board the _Orion_ , any or all of whom would avenge their captain.

Where had it all gone wrong?

"Well, Jack," said Barbossa, all fixed smile and deceptively smooth voice, "there's no need for you to worry about my men and how they came to me, for you won't have time to tell them any of your lies." He was on the poop-deck now, walking towards Jack as though they were alone on the red-stained deck. Down in the waist, his men were quickly and efficiently despatching those men who still moved, or made a sound; and those who did not move were thrown to the sharks. There was -- had been for some time, now that Jack took notice of it -- a constant screaming, but it was lessening rapidly.

"When did I ever lie to you, mate?" said Jack, bringing up his cutlass to parry Barbossa's blow. His entire body ached with the impact; and then Barbossa sliced at him again, rocking Jack against the mast so that for an instant he was sure that Barbossa had somehow got _behind_ him and laid him open from shoulder to waist; but it was the impact of the solid wood on his half-healed back, not the straight deep cut of a sword-edge.

"Every time you said you were with us, you wicked dog!" cried Barbossa, chopping at Jack's defence as though blood were not gouting, vividly red and alive, from his pistol-shot shoulder. "I'd've had the _Pearl_ if it weren't for your meddling, cully."

"Well, as it turns out," said Jack, squinting over Barbossa's shoulder and blinking sweat (or was it blood?) out of his eyes, "you can have another try at her."

Barbossa laughed out loud, and swept his cutlass low: Jack leapt to save himself, and staggered off-balance, sacrificing one of his own blades to throw out a hand and catch himself before he fell. The sword clattered away over the deck: Jack cursed and swept up a discarded boarding-axe in his left hand instead, though 'twas no substitute for a good steel edge.

"D'ye think I'm a green boy, to rise to that bait?" demanded Barbossa, stepping closer and raising his sword.

Jack could not answer. He was dizzy, from the noise and from the slow seep of blood from a dozen trivial cuts that he had somehow acquired. The Imp gyrated frantically on his shoulder, ululating a shrill paean to the spectral black ship that was rounding the point; and Jack remembered tales of lost souls wandering the seven seas, of ships crewed by the damned, of black-sailed ships in some tale of death ... Was he dead, then, and this all Hell? Was he dying, and this the Imp's farewell extravaganza? In which case, thought Jack, 'twas a damned unfair one; for he could not make out the figure of the _Pearl_ 's captain (or of any other man, not that he cared for _them_ ) at this distance, and therefore as hallucinations went this one was sadly lacking in the details that made madness so delightful an alternative.

Barbossa dealt a tremendous blow, and Jack had to dodge away from the mizzen to avoid being cut in half. This was a mistake, he realised at once, and he was unlikely to have the opportunity to learn from it: for now that he had no shield at his back, nothing to brace himself against, Barbossa was driving him back towards the jammed rudder, and Jack must go over the taffrail or down under his blade.

He yelled as loud as he could, not even sure of what he was yelling, and launched himself at the pirate; and Barbossa, surprised, stepped back.

Then the _Black Pearl_ 's guns roared, utterly real and immediate, and her banked oars disappeared in a cloud of powder-smoke. The wind might be against her, but the long sweeps pulled her closer to the beset _Orion_ by the moment.

The surprise of _that_ hit Barbossa harder than the pistol-ball had done. Jack saw it rock him, and saw him stumble on the swaying deck. From somewhere below came renewed cries, and there was a sudden smell of smoke. And there, there, the _Black Pearl_ , bearing down upon the crippled _Orion_ and her parasitic captor like vengeance embodied.

Jack wanted to cheer: but there was something he wanted more, and that was Barbossa's corpse at his feet. He kept pushing forward, pressing the attack (desperate for this to be over so that he could get aloft again and see if Jack Sparrow were there at the helm of his darling ship; if he'd forgive Jack; if he'd take Jack aboard for the price of...)

Barbossa's blade sliced into his arm, and Jack swore and brought his blade up to block the other man's. Barbossa was terribly strong, and he was in a rage, swearing and cursing Jack Shaftoe.

"Aye, an' once I'm done with you, I'll take the _Pearl_ for me own! Aye, an' her pretty captain too," he added, leering.

Jack snarled at him. He wanted to say something about that -- something about Barbossa never having what Jack'd been freely given, and what, oh! he longed more than rubies to have again -- but he saved his breath (the Imp for once silent too) and tried to stay on his feet and beat his taller, heavier opponent back to the rail.

The _Black Pearl_ was almost close enough to touch, now, and Jack risked a glance across at her clean, dark deck. Surely that was her captain at the helm, vivid and golden and graceful, scowling down his precious telescope at the remains of the battle? The _Pearl_ 's sweeps were still out -- two men to each, Jack knew -- and the ship was pulling away from the stricken _Orion_ : the throat-stripping reek of smoke was stronger now, and Jack didn't blame Sparrow for removing his lovely ship from harm, but oh, to be left again...

There was a way around that, and Jack resolved to take it or die trying. He caught Barbossa's next blow high on his own blade, nearly snapping it, and brought his other hand around fast so that the other man had no room for evasion.

The boarding-axe Jack had plucked from the deck was notched and blunt, and Barbossa's chest was padded with several layers of linen, wool and leather. Yet he howled when the axe hit home, and his next blow at Jack was weaker. And Jack -- now decidedly dizzy, and wondering whether he had the strength to reach the other ship or even to leave this one before she sank -- pursued his enemy (Jack Sparrow's enemy) across the bloody deck, and caught the pommel of his cutlass in his fist, and drove it into the pirate's heart.

Everything became quiet, or perhaps deafeningly loud. Jack gasped for breath, though it hurt to breathe such smoky air. The blood on Barbossa's shirt was very bright, and there was more brightness, flickering, off to Jack's left: but when he raised his head all he saw was shadow.

"Shaftoe!" yelled someone from a little way away, and Jack's vision cleared abruptly. He was leaning on the rail next to Barbossa's corpse (which he kicked); there were shouts from behind him, as first one, then another of Barbossa's men noticed the fate of their captain, and noisily deduced Jack's probable role in it; the _Orion_ was blazing, down in the waist, as though her timber had stood dry for years. There was a booming noise from somewhere down below, and the ship rocked.

In front of him, a stone's throw away, loomed the dark, beautiful, chimerical _Black Pearl_ , and her captain stood poised on the rail, more vivid and real than anything, looking straight at Jack. Smiling at him.

"Jump, Mr Shaftoe!" he called, gesturing: and Jack did.


	16. Navigational Errors, ch 16

  
  
Jack Sparrow leant out precariously from the ratlines, training his glass upon the deck of the crippled _Orion_ : but though he had seen Barbossa fall, he could not see his body.

Instead, scanning the other ship, he saw a mass of raging pirates -- some of their faces horribly familiar, others unknown to him -- threatening slow, dire vengeance upon the man who had murdered their leader; or so, at least, it seemed to Jack Sparrow, watching them in magnification through his telescope. A couple of them, sharper-sighted or more attentive than the rest, had seen him, and were gesturing; perhaps they expected mercy, or succour, from their former captain. Perhaps they were damning him to the same fate as Jack Shaftoe: who had slain Barbossa, and had seen Jack, and grinned at him across the intervening expanse of sea, and leapt.

Jack turned his attention to the waves. There were a number of corpses bobbing in the water, Navy and pirate alike: Jack was not interested in these, except inasmuch as their torn and bloody flesh drew the sharks away from Jack Shaftoe, who had surfaced (Jack had not been quite sure that he could swim; for he'd given Shaftoe little chance to do so, that time they'd leapt together from the maintop) and was heading for the _Black Pearl_. A musket-ball pocked the smooth curve of a wave in front of him, but he was almost beyond the range of the pirates on the blazing _Orion_.

"She's going," said Bill, low and urgent. "And we need to be well clear of her when she does, in case of the magazine going up. These Navy ships..."

"Mmm," said Jack, his mind on more immediate risks -- the perilous waters that Shaftoe swam through, for instance. He tucked the glass into his sash and pulled out his pistol. "Turn the ship so we're stern-on."

Bill looked as though he wanted to discuss the matter, but Jack raised his pistol and narrowed his eyes, and Bill went hastily off to order the men to their oars.

There was the usual grumbling, but Jack had expected that; the long sweeps were hard work, and this time he wasn't joining his crew down below. The starboard oars stretched out and into the water -- pushing aside dead men, and enraged sharks -- and the ship began to turn. Jack jumped down from the ratlines, one hand free to steady himself as the current caught the _Pearl_ amidships, driving her towards the rocky shore. This was a perilous course to take, and Bill, at the helm, knew it; he shot Jack a beseeching look.

Jack ignored it. Pistol in hand, he made his way to the stern, catching up a coil of rope as he went. For a moment he could not see Jack Shaftoe, and there was a peculiar wrenching sensation low in his belly; but then he saw Shaftoe's blond head between waves -- the tide was turning, and the water was choppier -- and breathed again.

The _Pearl_ was pulling away from Shaftoe, moving faster than he could swim; and, worse, a couple of slick black points were surging hungrily towards him.

Shaftoe had been bleeding when Jack, disbelieving, first made him out in the midst of the battle; bleeding from a number of small cuts, and a deeper wound in his forearm that Jack was sure had been dealt by Barbossa. For some reason Shaftoe had been dressed only in light canvas breeches, the sort that Navy lads wore; and he'd been fighting off the pirates as though they were the enemy, which was fair enough as far as Jack Sparrow was concerned, with Barbossa at their head. The concept of Shaftoe turning Navy -- truly, in his heart, and not just as a matter of convenience -- was disconcerting enough. But shirtless, as he was in so many of Jack's more lubricious dreams? For sure, Jack still wore Shaftoe's shirt, though it no longer smelt of its owner; but hadn't the damned Navy given him another?

Anyway. (Jack shook his head, and squinted at Shaftoe's swimming form.) The blood had been very bright, as he fought Barbossa, against his tanned skin; and clearly it was equally bright, though perhaps not in the same way, to the pair of sharks arrowing through the rising waves towards him.

Jack could not reach Shaftoe in time, and it was too far, still, to hurl a line. He raised his pistol.

"No, Captain!" came a cry, and someone grabbed Jack's hand and pulled it back so that the pistol pointed harmlessly aloft. Jack blinked slow, and sighed, and muttered an oath; then opened his eyes and turned to see who'd dared interfere.

It was Tom Cox's hand on his arm, Tom Cox's appalled look fixed upon Jack Sparrow, and at any other moment Jack would have commended his loyalty; but as it was, he simply snarled at Tom. Tom looked sick, but he took his hand away.

It was a long shot, and Jack not the best of marksmen, never mind on a pitching vessel in the lee of a rock-fanged shore; but perhaps his famous luck was with him again (it had been markedly absent the morning that he'd lost Shaftoe -- though perhaps it had simply been ebbing, after the glorious flooding flow of fortune, amongst other things, on the previous evening) for one of the fins shuddered, and the shark rose up for a moment, thrashing. Then its fellow turned upon this closer, fresher feast -- turned away from Shaftoe -- and Jack dropped the pistol to the deck; bestowed a smirk upon Tom Cox, who seemed to be praying; and, taking the rope in one hand, hurled the whole uncoiling length of it towards where Jack Shaftoe swam.

"It's a fucking miracle, oh Christ -- Captain, I'm sorry, will ye forgive me? Only I thought -- "

"Yes, yes, forgiven," said Jack abstractedly; "go and tell Mr Turner to set a proper course."

"Where to?"

Jack flung his free hand wide, gesturing at the open ocean that stretched north to the horizon. "Thataway!"

Tom looked at him doubtfully, and Jack said, "Mr Shaftoe will be joining us directly. Go!"

Tom went, running, and Jack returned his entire attention to the tautness of the rope he held. That tautness meant that Jack Shaftoe was at the end of it, though Jack couldn't see him for white water and smoke -- the _Orion_ was blazing merrily now, and there were screams coming faintly across the water -- and, because this was the closest he'd come to touching Jack Shaftoe since that night when they'd slept on the same narrow mattress, Jack was not about to let go.

Briefly he entertained the notion of tying Jack Shaftoe to himself somehow, so that he could not stray again; but no, Shaftoe wouldn't care for it, and Jack himself preferred the idea of Shaftoe coming to him, and staying, willingly. Though being rescued from the jaws of various deaths -- fiery, watery, piscine, piratical -- perhaps would not constitute 'coming willingly'.

But there was Jack Shaftoe (the rope was tightening painfully about Jack's forearm, but he ignored it), hair plastered to his head, gasping for breath, grinning up at him from the slack water of the _Black Pearl_ 's slow wake as though this were the grandest of adventures. Jack bared his teeth in return -- more like a shark, from the stiff stretched feel of his face, than a man -- and hauled harder.

"Mind the rudder-chain, Mr Shaftoe!" he called, and then Jack Shaftoe was scrambling up the ornately-carved stern of the _Black Pearl_ as she swung around and set that stern to the foam-strewn rocks so horribly near on the shore: and now, with Shaftoe seconds away from him, Jack wanted the moment to stretch out so that he had time to recognise their peril and be thankful for Bill's steady hand at the helm. He wanted to savour the imminence of his reunion with Jack Shaftoe. He wanted to tell the oarsmen -- shipping their oars now -- to give any would-be boarder, seeking refuge from the poor old _Orion_ , a knock on the head, and let the sharks take 'em. He wanted...

But, like that golden afternoon when the two of them (Jack Shaftoe clutching his arm as tightly as this rope now wound about it) had leapt from the masthead into the wide blue ocean, the moment was snapping into an impossibly immediate sliver of time: and Jack Shaftoe was letting himself be pulled over the taffrail and carried, by sheer momentum, up against Jack Sparrow.

Shaftoe's cool, wet skin burnt Jack like a blazing brand, and he was covered with blood; Jack had to step away before he stuck to him with sheer want, never mind the sticky wet mess (how would it taste?) of his skin. He could not quite bear to let go, though; he held onto Shaftoe's arm tightly, as though they might be torn apart again.

Jack Shaftoe stared into his eyes with a gaze so blue and vividly alive that Jack thought he might be drowning. He stared back at Shaftoe, wishing the talking was done with already; yet it might not come out in his favour, and so 'twas better to wait...

"You left me," accused Shaftoe, beaming.

"To be perfectly accurate, Mr Shaftoe, _you_ left _me_ ," said Jack. He looked Shaftoe up and down, noting the myriad small cuts and purpling bruises that a man commonly acquired in any engagement, letting his gaze linger at Shaftoe's groin (where the wet cloth clung most intriguingly) and savouring Shaftoe's blush.

"Press-ganged," said Shaftoe simply, because now there was the sound of running feet as other men came aft to witness his restoration to them, and there was no time, after all, to talk.

Jack let go of Shaftoe's arm, but he could take no more than one step back. The familiar ache of not having Shaftoe -- an ache that had quickly become a part of his internal landscape, between the drunken nights and the bad-tempered days -- was swiftly being supplanted by the more strictly mundane (and much more piquantly pleasurable) ache of his _presence_ , dripping blood and salt water and exuding a warm, magnetic glow that drew in not only Jack Sparrow, but now Tom Cox and Bill Turner, and those others of the _Black Pearl_ 's crew who could be spared from the urgent and necessary work of clawing her off the wicked shore onto which they'd so nearly been driven.

"Barbossa's dead," said Jack Shaftoe directly to Jack, and to Bill, "I killed 'im."

Bill punched the air, grinning. "That's very well done, mate. Very well done."

Ragetti was there too, hanging back, and Shaftoe lifted one bleeding hand (with a conscious theatricality much admir'd by Jack Sparrow) and said, pointing, "What's _he_ doing here?"

"As much right as you to be here," said Ragetti belligerently. He looked down, then up at Shaftoe again. "I'm glad you killed him, mate," he said quietly.

Shaftoe's eyebrows shot up; but he did not seem the sort to carry a grudge, and Ragetti had never been as harmful as his cavilsome friend Pintel, lately slain (but there'd be time enough, later, for Shaftoe to hear that tale) by Barbossa.

"Mr Turner," said Jack, "what's our course?"

"North-east, Captain," said Bootstrap readily. "That'll take us offshore, and back toward Morawhanna, if you've no other course in mind."

"North-east it is, for now," said Jack. "Delightful views on this tack, wouldn't you say?"

Indeed, they had come about so neatly that the remains of the _Orion_ , being carried towards the shore on the incoming tide, were quite visible from the starboard bow. Her back was broken, her masts down and her bow quite out of the water; the perogua, manned by a scant dozen pirates, had cut herself free from the _Orion_ 's stern before it disappeared beneath the waves, and now was hauling pirates, and other jetsam, from the water. It was hard to tell in the choppy water, but none of the waving, screaming swimmers -- some of them, no doubt, already attracting sharks -- looked as though they'd been Navy men.

Nothing to be done for the _Orion_ or her crew any more: but she was, at least, no threat now to the _Black Pearl_. Jack did not think that he'd be encountering his old shipmates -- those who were not shark-gobbled -- for some time, either. They would not stay leaderless for long, but with Barbossa dead they'd squabble amongst themselves: there wasn't another amongst the mutineers who could hold a crew together and forge it into more than the sum of its parts.

"So, Mr Shaftoe," said Jack, raising his voice over the greetings and gossip of the others. They fell silent with gratifying promptness. "I see you're Navy now?"

"Fallen into bad company," said Shaftoe, unabashed. "But I didn't care much for their hospitality." He turned slowly, displaying the raw pink marks of a recent dozen from the cat o' nine tails, and there were murmurs of sympathy. Jack's breath hitched at the thought of Shaftoe, standing stoic and taking it; and then being tended -- if at all -- by some rough-handed Navy sadist... There was water running into Shaftoe's eyes, down his face, from his wet hair; he shook his head, scattering salt water, blood and light, and Jack tried not to stare.

"No desire to be returned, then?" he asked Shaftoe briskly, looking him directly in the eye and hoping against hope that Shaftoe would understand all the other questions implicit in that single bald enquiry.

If Shaftoe knew what he was being asked (will you stay with us? Will you stay with _me_ , and be mine?) there was no sign of it. "None, Captain," he answered.

"You're bleeding on my deck, Mr Shaftoe," said Jack, utterly lost and in desperate need of some privacy to interrogate Jack Shaftoe more thoroughly; or, failing that, to indulge in some leisurely phant'sies of such an interrogation's ideal outcome. The way the admixed blood and seawater curved around the muscles of his arm... "Have Tom bind you up; or Joe, he's clever with a needle." He frowned at the bosun. "No embroidery, mind!"

A couple of the men laughed; Joe was a fair hand with a needle when it came to sailcloth, but he'd been 'prenticed to a haberdasher, and several of the crew had commissioned him to do finer work for themselves or their girls. Shaftoe did not laugh, but he shot Jack a long, considering look that made Jack want to seize him and drag him away, and never mind the blood he was losing from that gash -- deep enough to be dangerous if it weren't attended to -- or Ragetti's suspicious expression as he glanced between the two of them, or Tom's extravagant solicitude that had Jack Shaftoe laughing, after all, and calling him an old woman.

Jack stared after them as they went forward, hoping that he appeared more intent on the course that the perogua was setting as she weathered the point. The rest of the men did not seem to care one way or t'other about their captain's interest, or lack of it, in Jack Shaftoe. They went variously off to their tasks, or their hammocks, or to keep Shaftoe company, hear his tales of their old comrades, and marvel vicariously at his wounds.

"Mr Turner," said Jack Sparrow, when Shaftoe was out of earshot.

"Captain?" said Bill, suppressing a smile.

Jack scowled at his First Mate, but he was too distracted to make it count. "We'll sail for Trinidad," he decided. "The Navy won't be bothering anyone for a while, not 'til word of the _Orion_ 's fate comes out; and I doubt any of the late Barbossa's men will be noising it around. Meanwhile, I've a mind to do a spot of plundering." Bill's smile widened at this, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Plundering _gold_ , mate, gold an' silver, remember? Pirating? There's the Don's little treasure-trove to uncover. And I do hear tell that Nassau's nice, once the hurricano season's over."

"And Mr Shaftoe?" said Bill, looking intently over Jack's shoulder at the receding coast, and avoiding Jack's quizzical gaze.

"Well," said Jack, "there's no need to go after him now, is there? And he's done us all another great favour. I say he can stay, if there's no objections."

"Going to talk to him?" said Bill, glancing towards the helm.

Jack's blood was itching in his veins with everything he wanted to do to, with, for Jack Shaftoe; he had caught himself straining to catch the echo of Shaftoe's laugh from the forecastle as Tom kept him company while Joe cleaned and stitched the worst of his cuts; he wanted, heaven help him, to take Shaftoe off and tend him alone, and lie naked next --

"Once they're done with Mr Shaftoe, I'd like to see him in my cabin," said Jack as insouciantly as he could manage.

Bootstrap nodded, and kept his smile discreet; but Jack warmed to him (with that sliver of his black heart that wasn't entirely taken up with Jack Shaftoe's restoration) for the affection in his gaze.

"A course for Trinidad," said Bill. "I'll see you're not disturbed for any triviality."

"Thankee," said Jack, smiling, and nodded to his old friend; and tried not to hurry, or to mutter to himself, as he went below.


	17. Navigational Errors, ch 17

  
  
"Captain's in a strange way," observed Jack Shaftoe, sotto voce, to Tom Cox as Tom led him for'ard to where Joe waited with his needles.

Tom looked at him as though he'd sprouted horns, but all he said was, "Aye, he is."

Once Jack had been settled -- everyone very solicitous, concerned, attentive -- and Tom had got to work with a basin of fresh water and a grubby cloth, Jack looked around at the circle of faces. They all seemed fascinated by his reappearance, and eager to assess the extent of his wounds. Could he really attribute this sudden popularity to having killed Barbossa? Probably not.

"So where did Ragetti turn up?" he said, more or less at random.

"Just today," said Joe, squinting as he threaded a needle that, Jack was pleased to see, was bright and sharp and fine. "Found 'im up along the coast. Captain was asking after Barbossa an' his mates, see --"

"Captain was asking after _you_ ," said Tom, squeezing a clothful of Jack's blood into the reddening water.

The two of them looked at one another -- Jack with his best attempt at wide-eyed innocence, and Tom all thoughtful and serious -- and Jack could see that Tom was working it all out in his head. He could practically predict Tom's disgusted recoil, and was doubly surprised; first, by the realisation that he did not especially _care_ what Tom Cox thought, and second, by the lack of that reaction. Tom's open, friendly face was easy to read (for Jack to read, at any rate) and he was not appalled or repelled, but only surprised, by the notion of Jack Shaftoe -- previously so unreceptive to advances from other men, be they ne'er so handsome, rich or charming -- welcoming the attentions of a pirate captain. Of, to put it more specifically, the undeniably handsome and charming, if not precisely wealthy, Jack Sparrow.

Tom's eyebrows were raised, and the intensity of his gaze was attracting the attention of the _Black Pearl_ 's gawping crew: to defuse it all, Jack said, "You'll never guess who I met in the Navy, Tom."

"Who's that, then?" said Tom, recognising the diversion but rising to it, obligingly, anyway.

"Dick Porter!"

"Good old Dick!" said Tom, relieved.

"Good old Dick?" grumbled Jack. "Snivelling little turncoat, you mean, or p'rhaps we're talking about two entirely different fellows. Turns me in to the Press Sergeant; tells the world that I chose freedom with these fine gentlemen over a gradually soggier life on that bloody sugar-ship, and thus, _thus_ , earning me an entirely undeserved, nay, unwarranted session with the cat --"

Not only warranted, but producing the most peculiar reactions: but there was no need to share this information with the crew -- no few of them ex-Navy men -- who were even now muttering a litany of their own experiences at the losing end of that particular transaction.

"Where's Dick now?" said Tom, swabbing a cut with rum so that Jack hissed between his teeth.

"Back there," he said, jerking his head indicatively.

"No moving," warned Joe Turk, grasping Jack's wrist more firmly (though Jack could still feel, like a ghost, the outline of Jack Sparrow's fingers on his skin) and bending again to his task.

Tom's face fell: he had always been a kind-hearted chap. "He didn't make it?"

Jack Shaftoe shook his head. "I saw him fall," he said. It was more or less true; if Dick had somehow survived the pirate attack (and Jack _had_ tried to distract Smith, late of the _Black Pearl_ , from killing Dick, but Dick had already been grievously wounded, and besides had muffed his chance at getting Smith back for it) he'd have gone down with the _Orion_ , or burned on her deck. No need to speculate in front of poor Tom, who'd been a better friend to him than Dick Porter could ever have been.

"I'm sorry for it," said Tom, looking down; but he did not stop dabbing at Jack's wounds, which now mainly stung rather than ached.

"There," said Joe, biting off the thread with his teeth. "Neat as the Sultan's slipper."

Jack risked a glance at his arm. The wound was ragged and puffy, but Joe's neat stitches (in an improbable shade of blue) held the skin together, and he could move his hand without too much pain.

"Thankee, Joe," he said. "I owe you one."

"Don't you worry," said Joe, glancing up at someone approaching. Jack's heart leapt, and he twisted around, making Tom curse mildly as he attempted to clean a graze on Jack's shoulder: but it was only Bill, in another of his eye-wrenching shirts; this one was blessedly faded, but had once been violet.

"All done?" Bill enquired, with a smile that Jack could not interpret.

"Aye," said Jack. "It's good to be back."

"Hmm," said Bill Turner. "Mr Shaftoe, Captain Sparrow would like to see you in his cabin."

Jack scrambled to his feet, belatedly attempting to disguise what must've appeared unseemly haste.

"I ain't finished," said Tom, still kneeling.

Jack wanted to kick him. "It'll wait," he said.

"No, Jack," said Bootstrap, chuckling, "'twouldn't be polite to bleed on the captain's ... floor."

Jack heard the pause, and all the innuendo that lay hidden within it; and fought back the urge to blush, or possibly to hit Bill.

"Uncivil to keep him waiting," he argued, crouching back down so that Tom could swipe the crimson, rum-soaked cloth over the last of his scratches.

"He'll live," said Bill, eyeing Jack's pink-striped back. "Navy, eh?"

"Bastards," said Jack feelingly. Did Bootstrap doubt his story? It was weak enough ("I got lost on the way back to your captain's bed") but it was _true_ , and he violently resented the notion of being cut dead, or cast away, for deceit when he'd been (for once) entirely honest.

"So you're back to stay, Mr Shaftoe?"

Jack had been asked this sort of question before, but it was usually by his brother Bob (who had much in common with, though better dress sense than, Bootstrap Bill), or by some erstwhile paymaster, or by one or more of the kinsmen of some especially charming lass. Come to think of it, Bill's genial query had more of the latter to it than anything.

"I've every intention of staying, Mr Turner," he said, without even pausing to wonder if it was the truth. "If the _Black Pearl_ 'll have me."

Bill smiled at him more warmly, now, and nodded. "Best take that up with Captain Sparrow," he said; and winked, Jack was sure of it.

"All done," said Tom cheerily, oblivious (or pretending to be) to the conversation, spoken and unspoken, above his head.

"Wish me luck," Jack said, getting to his feet again and shaking his head against the dizziness. He was not bleeding now, at least.

"Luck," Joe and the rest of 'em chorused; but Bill smirked, and Tom twisted his mouth into a becoming pout, so that Jack decided to kick him after all.

He paused at the top of the stairway. The _Black Pearl_ stood well out from the land, and the smouldering remains of the _Orion_ could no longer be seen. Jack spared a thought -- though only a brief one -- for the men who'd gone down with her. Poor old Dick; not his fault he'd been such a prat. And Barbossa; good riddance. And the rest of them: that Marine Sergeant with his gristly fists; poor Captain Hammill and his hopes of peaceful surrender ...

Jack wanted to laugh for the sheer joy of being alive; a state which, he expected, was about to become ever so much more pleasant.

The door to the captain's cabin -- the same small cabin to which he'd called Jack so long ago, before the mutiny -- opened almost before Jack had knocked. Jack Sparrow stood silently within, beckoning Jack. There was a single dim glass lantern hanging, as it had been before, from the beam above the bunk, and yellow late-afternoon light streaming in through the open porthole. The cabin smelt of its owner, and Jack breathed deep, and turned his gaze to Jack Sparrow as the door clicked shut.

"You left me," said Sparrow without preamble, leaning back against the door and simply looking at Jack Shaftoe, or rather devouring him with a palpable black gaze. His voice was almost disinterested.

"You left me," argued Jack gleefully. The Imp bounced on his shoulder, full of excitement at being alone with Sparrow once more. Jack still felt dizzy; some of that was the blood loss, no doubt, but some of it the sheer proximity to Sparrow, and the smell of him, and the tidal pull that Jack could hardly resist.

"This one, this one!" hallelujahed the Imp, and Jack had to agree.

"I woke up and you were gone," said Sparrow sweetly. "Now it seems to me that that indicates _you_ leaving. Perhaps I should tie you down next time, in case we get confused."

Every remaining drop of blood in Jack's body -- and, most likely, those quarts of the stuff he'd spilt on the _Orion_ 's decks, and in the shark-toothed ocean, and outside with Joe pricking away fussily at his arm -- reverberated with joy at the idea of there being a Next Time. Possibly, thought Jack, that meant there'd be a This Time, too.

"You could've come after me," he argued anyway, settling himself on the edge of the bunk.

"For all _I_ knew, mate, you'd panicked and fled."

"Why would I do that?" retorted Jack, with a slow smile.

"P'rhaps you wanted a girl," said Jack Sparrow, pushing himself away from the door and taking a step towards Jack.

"You've no great opinion of my understanding, then," said Jack, "for, as a matter of fact, I'd noticed." Sparrow raised his eyebrows enquiringly. "That you _weren't_ a girl," Jack amplified.

Sparrow nodded, and beamed, and took another step towards Jack. It was not a large cabin. "Happy to hear it, Mr Shaftoe."

Jack looked at Sparrow -- looked _up_ at Sparrow, from this angle -- and saw how Sparrow's dark eyes widened, how that kissable mouth opened without any words issuing from it, at the attention. He let himself look, and did not bother trying to hide the fact that he wanted Jack Sparrow.

It was hot in Sparrow's cabin, despite the open porthole, and Jack was still aching and light-headed from the battle, the swim, the rescue: and before that, he dimly remembered, from lying in his hammock on the gun-deck, thinking of his single night with Jack Sparrow and hardening without even touching himself. He ached, now, and the ache and the heat and the sheer pressure of Jack Sparrow's undivided attention felt like a solid thing, an immanence that was about to split open and _happen_.

Jack wanted it to happen, possibly more than he'd ever wanted anything: he wanted to provoke it into happening. He let his eyes linger on Sparrow's chest, on the bare tanned skin beneath the notch at the base of his throat, left bare because the shirt he wore --

"Is that my shirt?" Jack said, surprised out of his lustful reverie.

"Aye," said Sparrow, and his voice was deeper than Jack had ever heard it.

"Take it off," ordered Jack, wondering if it were possible to spend simply from watching someone undress.

"Why should I?" said Jack Sparrow, tilting his head back and looking down at Jack from under those ridiculously long lashes. Surely not painted, here on board?

Jack leaned back, propping himself on his hands, and his cock leapt at the predatory smile on Sparrow's face; and leapt again at the way Sparrow's breath hitched as he watched Jack responding to him.

"Because," he said, very slow, very soft, "I ... want ... you."

Sparrow swayed towards him, and next instant was leaning over Jack, his breath warm on Jack's face, his hands either side of Jack's hips; and Jack swallowed, and tried not to arch up towards him.

"What do you want, Jack?" he asked softly, as he'd asked back in Stabroek; but this time Jack Shaftoe knew the answer, and he said, "You."

And then, oh bliss, Sparrow's mouth was on his, kissing him hard -- nothing, oh, nothing at all like a girl, or even like the girl he'd played in Stabroek -- and Jack let himself be borne backwards (hissing when his tender back touched the coarse weave of Sparrow's bed-covering) and pressed down firmly, with Sparrow's hips pushing against his own, Sparrow's erection hot, through their clothes, against his thigh, and Sparrow's hands oddly gentle over his chest, his throat, his face.

"Jack..." breathed Sparrow, and Jack opened his eyes, and inhaled Sparrow's breath, and couldn't stop smiling.

"You left me," Sparrow said again, but this time it was plaintive and forlorn, and Jack wanted to curve and curl around the other and not leave ever again -- though this was probably not at all practicable, and so he did not mention it.

Instead he said, "I never meant to -- I fought 'em off, but I couldn't get free -- and I couldn't come to you, Jack, no matter how hard I wished it..."

He was babbling, he knew -- perhaps the Imp was speaking for him -- but how could any man think in words, let alone sentences, with Jack Sparrow's mouth against his pulse, tasting his blood (and, Jack smiled to think, the rum that'd stemmed its flow), and the untrimmed stubble of Sparrow's beard scratching against his throat, and Sparrow's whole body, rocking against Jack's in a way that was both wildly delightful and dangerously arousing. Jack had no desire to shoot off like a raw boy; he wanted, oh, he wanted...

He was quite surprised to realise exactly what he did want; but somehow he was quite certain that Jack Sparrow would give it to him, if only Jack asked.

"You're still wearing my shirt," he pointed out instead, pulling back far enough to free his mouth from Sparrow's.

"I'll take it off if you take off something too," said Sparrow, leering, and Jack laughed out loud.

"I'll take off everything if you only do the same," he countered; and Sparrow laughed too, and hauled his shirt -- Jack's shirt -- over his head.

Then the two of them were pressed together, with Sparrow's hand working at the tie of Jack's breeches, and Jack fumbling at Sparrow's waist, feeling as though he would die if he couldn't touch, breathe, smell, taste Jack Sparrow ... he was too busy kissing to ask for anything more, and yet somehow, magically, Sparrow's hand was wrapping around his cock, and Jack groaned and rocked his hips up, head back, squeezing his eyes shut and seeing explosions of light.

"What d'you want, Jack?" said Sparrow once more, and suddenly Jack was afraid that he would somehow lose it all again, or at any rate lose the opportunity, if he did not speak; and besides, with that hand on him he felt omnipotent, incapable of shyness or embarrassment.

"I want you, Jack; I want you inside me, the way I was inside you; I want you to fuck me, I want to feel what it was like, I want to feel you --"

He couldn’t say more, for Sparrow's mouth was on his again, fiery and passionate and kissing him deeper than before, and underneath the kiss he could hear Sparrow's ragged, sobbing breath, as though he were gasping for air.

And yet when Sparrow finally surfaced from the kiss, he was quite composed, and his smile was wider and more wicked than ever.

"I think we can compass that, Jack," he said, "and I swear I won't press you if you find you don't care for it, but --"

He broke off and made a peculiar, beastish noise; for Jack Shaftoe had finally worked his way under Sparrow's clothes, and he took a firm hold of Sparrow's cock and began to stroke him, hard, the way Jack liked to touch himself; the way Sparrow was stroking him.

"Not yet," Sparrow managed, breathlessly, some while later. They had come free of their clothes, and were lying side by side on Sparrow's bunk, their hands on each other's cocks, kissing; Sparrow's free hand roaming over the sweet, sensitive curve of Jack's arse, making him moan into the kiss.

Jack was panting, and he ached to come, and he wanted all the preparation to be over. Sparrow had reached for a little jar of something or other, something that filled the cabin with a familiar spice-wood scent, and he was digging his fingers into it, and offering it to Jack -- "go on, put it on me, oh Christ yes" -- and oh, _oh_ , pushing his finger (one finger? aye, just one) against, into, oh god; and yet (thought Jack, squirming) perhaps not so very bad; he wrapped his slippery, greasy fingers around Sparrow's cock, all hot and silky and alive, and marvelled at the breadth of it before he could start wondering how it would _fit_ ; and Sparrow, with his mouth abruptly _oh god_ on Jack's nipple, and the beads in his hair falling and bouncing against Jack's hard prick in a strange and yet pleasurable fashion, was pressing two fingers into Jack now, he could feel 'em moving against each other, and surely this should hurt but ...

He arched against Sparrow, wailing (and, somewhere very far in the back of his mind, wondering with ridiculous clarity whether anyone could hear him) as those fingers touched him in a place he'd never known was there. Couldn't be safe, couldn't be healthy; and yet it felt so astonishingly good, and he remembered how Jack Sparrow had rocked above him, that night in the inn.

"Jack, I --" he said thickly, and let the sentence fall away unspoken as Sparrow twisted his fingers and, with them, the entire cabin, the ship, the sea ... Jack felt as though he were floating, very far away from his body (at least in terms of doing anything with it; his hand, despite his urgent demand of it, stilled on Sparrow's cock) and yet indubitably _in_ it, sharing it now with three of Sparrow's slick fingers, and feeling himself stretched wide open, quivering, with Sparrow's mouth, with Sparrow's mouth, oh, that mouth --

"Stop!" managed Jack, simultaneously cursing himself in case he never had that particular bliss again; but he wanted, oh he wanted, to have Jack Sparrow very much more inside him when he came, and if Sparrow had not lifted his head (licking his lips in a manner so provocative that Jack's cock leapt after him) it would all have been over before another minute had passed.

And anyway, he was not ashamed to beg for it, when next the opportune moment came around.

He intimated as much to Jack Sparrow -- though, having lost the use of most of his vocabulary, it was a graceless speech -- and Sparrow smiled blissfully, and kissed him, and said, "Turn over."

"But --" protested Jack.

"Trust me, darling, it'll be ever so much better; you'll love it; and I swear I'll do everything in my power to give it to you however you want it, whenever you want it, until you tell me you've had enough."

The delivery of this was so practiced that Jack couldn't help but feel he'd been the recipient of one of Sparrow's set-pieces, no doubt intended for the gentler sex; but this was no time to argue, and anyway there was no real need, for Sparrow's hands, pulling him up onto his knees and stroking him, were as deliciously affecting as Jack could wish, and Sparrow's tongue, lapping at Jack's lips and then insinuating its way inside -- that musky taste, surely, was _Jack's own flesh_ \-- felt so gloriously lewd that Jack cast aside those few scruples that had survived the last half-hour, and surrendered himself to the experience.

He bit his lip when Sparrow pushed into him, because it hurt, oh god it hurt; but Sparrow stopped, halfway (the thought of such self-control quite distracting Jack from the pain) and kissed him, all sweet and gentle, until the sharp complaint of forced muscle had faded; and then Jack -- moaning a little as Sparrow's hand teased around the head of his cock -- said, "Go on."

"I've been wanting this, dreaming -- nay, thinking every waking hour -- of this, Jack, you've no idea, none, and I didn't know if you'd want it, and if you didn't, if you don't, it doesn't matter, for I loved it when you took me thus, and gave _this_ to me, _thus_ \--" Here Jack groaned deep, and rocked his hips back into Jack Sparrow's next thrust, so that they both cried out and stopped moving for a moment. "I knew it, knew you'd come back, knew you'd be like this, no, couldn't've known you'd be so, so, oh, Jack..."

In the past, when Jack Shaftoe had made love to women, the moment of orgasm had been a kind of timeless blur -- perhaps like that described in various tales from the Orient -- where the woman in whom he'd buried himself had somehow become, for a moment, every woman he'd ever had. He remembered spending deep within Jack Sparrow, and how terrifyingly, marvellously different it had been to anything else he'd ever experienced; and now, with Sparrow gasping against Jack's ear, and pulling him back up, even closer, and oh sudden heat unsettlingly deep inside, and Jack couldn't stop himself for one second longer. He cried out, and Jack Sparrow's fingers gave one last languorous, wicked caress to his cock, and Jack spilt out over Sparrow's hand, spilt and spilt until his balls ached, and until he could no longer hold himself up.

They collapsed together onto the bed (Jack winced as Sparrow, ever so carefully, pulled out and away; but it was not really so bad) and lay there, breathing, just breathing, and touching; Sparrow's hand on Jack's sticky belly, Jack's hand on the pirate's.

"What now?" said Jack sleepily.

Sparrow rolled over and kissed Jack full on the mouth, warm and affectionate and slow, and only when he'd finished did he say, "The rest of our days together."

"I won't leave you," said Jack, or perhaps the Imp; and when he realised that he meant it, he propped himself on one elbow and stared at Sparrow, who was lying on his back, eyes closed, with a smile as beatific as a saint's, save for the wickedness plain in every line of his face.

He waited for Jack Sparrow to open his eyes and look at him; and when, at last, he did, Jack leaned down and kissed him long and lovingly; and let it stand, for now, for what was left unsaid.

\--end


End file.
